Production in the Barents Sea Fisheries: Across species and fisheries

The primary purpose of the project was to understand how fishermen in the Barents Sea decide to use input factors such as boats, equipment, crew, and fuel under given conditions related to fish stocks, fishing rights, and environmental and market conditions. Relevant topics included how factor usage changes with technological advancements, stock fluctuations, bycatch, and more general behavior. We also had to consider ecological interactions between different species and stocks in the ecosystem. Other relevant aspects were climate change, market forces, and regulations. A key challenge has been distinguishing between different impacts. The project utilized extensive knowledge and data about fisheries in the Barents Sea, including ecosystem models, wage surveys in Norwegian fisheries, fishing data from the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries, and from Global Fishing Watch. This formed the foundation for an ecological and economic understanding of fishery production in the Barents Sea under uncertainty, climate influence, and regulation. The second main objective was to use this understanding of fishery production, in the form of a production function, to calculate the societal value of resource use. Such calculations underlie evaluations of sustainability and measures of scarcity and various trade-offs beyond market-based metrics (prices). The project has contributed to knowledge about the connections between biodiversity and ecological functions on one side and ecosystem services and resource utilization on the other. Ecological and economic understanding will support sustainable resource use for clean and healthy oceans. We have made significant efforts on literature review, data collection, and method overview. An extension of the literature review is published in the article ‘A machine learning analysis of the recent environmental and resource economics literature’ (Kvamsdal et al. 2021, Environmental and Resource Economics). A central contribution on an ecological model for the Barents Sea that uses comprehensive data from the Institute of Marine Research and where we use machine learning methods was published in the article 'Using feedforward neural networks to represent ecosystem dynamics for bioeconomic analysis' (Ni et al. 2023, Marine Ecology Progress Series). Several relevant articles have been published recently, further works are under review. While meetings in the first part of the project period has been held online, the project has organized workshops the last years; Bergen Fisheries Economics Workshop 2021, 2022, and 2023. At these workshops, relevant on-going research has been presented and discussed.

The project has delivered revised calculations of marine ecosystem wealth in the Barents Sea fisheries subject to stochastic drivers and under different scenarios of climate change impacts. Long-term ecosystem wealth vary by more than 30% over the considered scenarios. Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is more robust to climate change impacts, and wealth is 10-15% higher under EBM, depending on the climate scenario. More research is needed to form a comprehensive understanding of ecosystem wealth under climate change, but the findings are clear evidence of the potential value of adopting EBM. On a fundamental level, this research addresses linkages between ecological functioning, ecosystem services, and resource exploitation in the scope of sustainability. Some further results: We have developed machine learning methodology (proof-of-concept) to represent ecosystem dynamics in bioeconomic analysis, as well as an approach to incorporate resilience objectives in management via heuristics. We have developed a model for spatiotemporal characteristics of the groundfish trawler fleet, and considered methodology for regime shifts. We have analysed impacts of negative environmental shocks in an age-structured bioeconomic model, and considered trade impacts on a resource industry in a game theory framework. Still on-going research will support an advanced and empirical-based understanding of the production process (technological development, spatiotemporal distribution of fishing effort and pressure), across fisheries and fleet segments. The project has contributed to new projects, new proposals, and to stimulate the fisheries economics milieu in Norway, and will as such have a long-lasting impact on research and development.

The main research question is how inputs and outputs combine in the Barents Sea fisheries, and establish a measure of the resulting social value. A crucial moment is the consideration of productivity growth (growth in fishing power), which comprises technical change, changes in technical efficiency, and capacity utilization. Another important question is the role of resource abundance, not least how the relative abundance between different target and bycatch species affect production and possibly fisher behavior. Ecological interactions between species must also be taken into account. Further issues that we will consider are climatic drivers, market forces, and regulatory impacts on fisheries outcomes. A fundamental challenge will be to distinguish between changes in productivity, changes in abundance, ecological and environmental changes, and regulatory and market impacts. Understanding fisheries requires an interdisciplinary approach and involves biology, ecology, economics, and governance, and requires statistical, methodological, and theoretical expertize. The project relies on a basic understanding of the functioning of the ecosystem, market and regulatory constraints and opportunities, technological development, and fisher behavior. We will further consider a trip-level analysis of fishing effort, resource use, and catches, considering variations across years, seasons, areas, and jurisdictions. We also engage with stakeholders to complement views on regulatory, economic, and environmental issues, and future scenarios for fisheries in the Barents Sea. The project represents a broad, bottom-up approach to provide high-level indicators of sustainable development and measures of ecosystem wealth. These measures go beyond traditional, market based evaluations to reflect resource scarcity and limits to trophic substitutions and are fundamental to long-run progress in renewable resource use from clean and healthy oceans.