Individual vessel quotas and unregulated species : the Norwegian blue whiting fishery

Abstract

This survey of the Norwegian purse seine fleet licensed to fish blue whiting focuses on the relationship between restricted fisheries, such as spring-spawning herring, North Sea herring, mackerel, and capelin, and unrestricted fisheries, of which blue whiting is the most important. To model the behaviour of the fishermen a restricted profit function is used, where species quotas are treated as fixed factors while blue whiting along with other non-quota species are variable factors. We find no relationship between blue whiting and herring, and mackerel. Blue whiting and capelin are substitutes. So are other non-quota species and spring-spawning herring. Other non-quota species are complements to mackerel and North Sea herring.