Bio-economic Model – Huh?

Invest in Fish South West is using a bio-economic model to help evaluate the effectiveness of fisheries management options, but what does that actually mean?

Over the coming months, Invest in Fish South West will assess the types of management measures needed to best sustain fisheries, taking into account the regional economy, local communities and the wider marine environment.

One of the main tools used within this process is a bio-economic model designed by scientists from The Centre for the Economics and Management of Aquatic Resources (CEMARE) at the University of Portsmouth and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS). The model shows the potential costs and benefits of fisheries management options on the region over different time periods.

“The model will form a common framework over which the impacts of fisheries management options can be explicitly measured and, therefore, make it possible for a consensus to be formed on real information rather than supposition,” comments Sean Pascoe, director of CEMARE and professor of Natural Resource Economics at the University of Portsmouth.

How the model works

In simple terms, the model can be compared to the far less complex computer game ‘Sim City’ where players can design a city and then see the effects of realistic choices – such as building a sports centre rather than a processing plant – on their virtual economy. In the same way, the Invest in Fish South West model will allow stakeholders to see the long-term effects of how different fisheries management options will affect fish stocks, the environment, local earnings and the regional economy.

At the heart of the Invest in Fish South West model is a sophisticated computer program designed to simulate the existing SW fisheries and the economies that depend on them. Different management scenarios are run through the model using the most recent biological and socio-economic data. These scenarios will show the outcomes of different proposed fisheries management options and how they might affect the region’s fisheries, economies and local communities, as well as the physical marine environment, over the next five, ten and fifteen years.

The Invest in Fish South West multidisciplinary approach enables the project to be creative and to analyse options that may not have been considered before. For example, recreational sea anglers could propose that sea bass be excluded from commercial fisheries, allowing only recreational anglers to fish for this species. The scientists could input this option into the model and run it for different time periods to indicate the costs and benefits to the different stakeholder groups. Management options with less definite outcomes can also be explored, and the associated levels of uncertainty identified.

Professor Pascoe says, “This model is a first-of-a-kind, as no other scientific model previously developed has had the direct involvement of such a wide range of interest groups or the inclusion of so many different factors.”

See in this Newsletter, ‘Bio-economic model – completion near’ or ‘Diagram of the bio-economic model’ for more details.

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