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The Abalone Group Project is the thesis project of five Master's students at the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
Optimal Design and Management of a Commercial Fishing Cooperative for the San Miguel Island Red Abalone Fishery
Abstract
The open-access nature of commercial fisheries worldwide has contributed to the poor management and subsequent decline or collapse of many once thriving stocks. However, catch-share management systems, in which fishery participants receive designated rights to the resource, have been demonstrated to remedy the mismanagement symptomatic of open-access fisheries. Sessile species such as abalone have proven to be especially prone to shortcomings of open access resources; as a result of chronic overharvesting a commercial moratorium on the take of California red abalone (Haliotis rufescens) was enacted in 1997. The recovery of the red abalone population at San Miguel Island (SMI) has led the California Fish and Game Commission to consider reopening the California red abalone fishery on an experimental basis at this location. In response to this opportunity, our client the California Abalone Association (CAA) has proposed a design for a commercial abalone cooperative, which would utilize catch-share management principles by dividing the catch and profits, as well as responsibility for stewardship of the resource, among the cooperative members, in order to incentivize the harvest of the SMI abalone resource in a sustainable fashion. The CAA requires assistance in assessing the economic and environmental viability of this proposed cooperative. Customization of design is the key to the success a catch-share management strategy; as such this project will evaluate the impacts of cooperative structure and environmental variables on the economic performance of the fishery over time. Through this process, we will deliver a set of recommendations for the optimal design of the cooperative, tailored to the specific needs of the CAA to maximize the economic and ecological viability of this commercial fishery. By doing so, this project will support the development of a local sustainable fishing cooperative while furthering the study of catch-share management.
Acknowledgements
The members of our group would like to thank the James S. Bower Foundation as well as the Sustainable Fisheries Group for their generous contributions to our project.
We would also like to express our appreciation to Dr. Chris Costello, Chris Voss, Alicia Bonnette and the members of the California Abalone Association, Dr. Bob Deacon, Dr. Hunter Lenihan, Chuck Cook, John Ugoretz, Dr. Christina Tague, Sarah Valencia, Tal Ben-Horin and Jono Wilson for their invaluable assistance in the development of our proposal.