Industry Sector - Fishing & Aquaculture

Perennial Economics have a good understanding and appreciation of economic issues as they relate to commercial fishing industries and fisheries management.

Analysing the economic impact of changes and threats to commercial fisheries is where Perennial Economics can provide research and consulting services to both public and private sector clients. These studies will typically involve examine changes to fisheries management arrangements and resource access brought about by events such as the designation of marine parks, industry restructuring and changes to resource sharing between the commercial, recreational, environmental and indigenous sectors.

Perennial Economics can also provide fishing industry analyses where the allocation of access rights in a fishery has been the central issue, e.g. changing from a licensed system with input controls – boat number, boat size, etc. – to a quota management system where licence holders have a volumetric allocation or a share of annually adjusted total allowable catch.

In preparing options and advice in these projects, Perennial Economics can undertake a high level of consultation with licence holders, receive and assesse submissions in public and private forums, and work closely with technical and legal experts involved in the management of the resource.

With using detailed boat level and industry level data collected by Perennial Economics, most of our anlaysis can be provided for both the licence holder and the fishery as a whole. Furthermore, we can develope a user friendly software that licence holders can use to analyse the implications of changes to fisheries management on their own business.We can also  provide this service for aquaculture industries.

Perennial Economics can supply a decision support software to guide investment decisions in a range of aquaculture enterprises (finfish, oysters, abalone, etc.).

 The scope of Perennial Economics fisheries and aquaculture services can be summarised as:

• Preparation of standard economic indicators (boat and fishery levels)
• Regional economic impact of fishing and aquaculture industries
• Decision support models for aquaculture investment
• Decision support models for analysing changes to fisheries management, e.g. input control to ITQs (individual transferable quotas)
• Cost-benefit analysis of investment in fishing and aquaculture industry R&D
• Expert witness services in fisheries economics