Spatial management of a fishery under parameter uncertainty

Abstract

Spatial management of a fishery under parameter uncertainty is analyzed. The habitat is divided into two areas, and the effort level in the two areas may be different. The migration of biomass between the areas follows a diffusion process; two different specifications are considered. The model features logistic growth and Schaefer production functions. The intrinsic growth rate is treated as uncertain; the uncertainty is symmetric and spatially homogeneous. It is found that the optimal, spatial distribution of effort with respect to expected harvest is neither homogeneous or heterogeneous everywhere, but homogenous for a given subset of the parameter space and heterogeneous elsewhere.