Trends in the economic capacity of the Danish fishing fleet, 1996-2002

The Danish fishing industry has gone through a turbulent period of declining catches and modest economic performance. In order to address these concerns, capacity reduction initiatives, mainly through vessel decommissioning, have sought to relieve pressure on fish stocks and improve the profitability of fishing vessels that remain in the fishery. It is the main purpose of this paper to analyse the capacity utilization trends of the four main commercial fleet segments of trawlers, netters, Danish seiners and industrial (fish for reduction) vessels. Annual cost and earnings data (1996-2002) for fishing vessels of the various fleets are applied to three data envelopment analysis models, which evaluate capacity utilization in terms of catch volume, catch revenue and short-run profit. Results suggest that considerable cutbacks in fleet capacity are required, in the range of 30-50%, if full capacity utilization is to be achieved. A preliminary discussion with respect to the impact of fleet capacity reduction initiatives on fleet performance concludes the paper.