Evaluating alternative policies for managing an Alaska pollock fishery with climate change
Abstract A previous study finds that the average percentage reduction in pollock catch from rising sea surface temperatures (SSTs), which is calculated based on simulated climate scenarios, is about 29% over a 42-year period (2009–2050). In the present study, we evaluate the seven alternative strategies in the previous study from an economic perspective. To do so, we couple alternative harvest policy simulations using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model for Alaska to assess the regional economic effects of rising SST and to compare the impacts from the alternative policies in terms of regional output, economic welfare, and real gross regional product. We find that the status quo policy performs less well than the alternatives. The policy allowing harvests to be less constrained performs worse. Overall, more conservative policies perform the best from an economic impact perspective. This result is contrasted with the finding in the previous study that the policy that makes downward adjustment to the fishing mortality as the stock size nears the target size performs best from a biological perspective.