Cost and Benefit of Control Strategies - Estimation of Benefit functions, enforcement-probability function and enforcement-cost function

 

Within the EU Sixth Framework Programme an ongoing research project, COBECOS, has developed a theory of enforcement and a software code for computer modeling of different fisheries with fisheries enforcement cases.

The case of the Danish fishery for Nephrops faces problems with landings of undersized lobsters and illegal bycactch of cod. The enforcement to avoid the illegal activities consists of physical control, such as dock side inspections and boarding, and administrative control with integration of different databases.

This paper presents the first steps in the application of the theory on fishery enforcement from the COBECOS project to a specific case. It is done by estimations of functional relationships' for describing 1) the fisheries benefit function 2) the shadow value of biomass 3) the connection between the probability of being detected and apprehended for different enforcement levels and 4) the connection between different enforcement levels and costs. The purpose of estimating the functional relationships are for future application in the COBECOS computer modeling in order to carry out an cost-benefit analysis of control strategies and thereby find the optimal mix and level of different types of enforcement.

General problems when trying to apply empirical data to the standardized fisheries enforcement model are summarized.