Portsmouth Business School

Thesis summary

My work primarily focuses on the economic assessment of measures aimed at reducing bycatch and environmental damage within commercial fisheries. These externalities do not affect the cost of production of the individuals and as a result are not self correcting. Measures developed to mitigate these problems can result in reduced fisher productivity and hence fishers are often unwilling to adopt them. As such it is important any affects on productivity are measured for and quantified.

I am currently involved in the EU and DEGREE and NECASSITY projects, both of which aim to develop new bycatch reducing/less environmentally damaging gears and assess their potential impacts. I aim to use cost-effectiveness analysis or a similar technique to consider possible gear changes in terms of their potential economic/environmental gains.

I have also been involved with the DEFRA funded study 'MF0738' Gear technology, discard reduction and environmentally friendly fishing studies'. This involved an ex-post estimation of a mandatory uptake of bycatch reducing gears (veil nets) on the productivity of the UK Crangon (brown shrimp) fishery.