The Distribution of Fishing Revenues Among North Pacific Regions and Communities.

FISHERY management; FISHING villages; BUSINESS revenue; INDIVIDUAL fishing quotas

Our study uses data on vessel ownership and residency to link the earnings from North Pacific fisheries to the individual communities, cities, and states in which harvesters live and likely spend much of their fishing returns. We provide perspective on which fishing fleets generate the greatest revenues, describe the geographic location of vessel and quota owners in these fisheries, and analyze changes in the distribution of fisheries revenues over the past decade in response to new management initiatives. We examine trends in fishery diversification for fishing communities within regions and across population size. Our results suggest greater complexity than some of the literature and stakeholder sentiment which argue that limited access and catch share programs cause small fishing-dependent communities to lose revenue. Using data from 2004 to 2013, we find no consistent trend of revenue or transfer of vessels from rural Alaska to Seattle, nor revenue consolidation away from smaller towns toward larger cities. We find that some regions are increasingly concentrated and reliant on the revenue generating capacity of a smaller vessel fleet. This trend is likely a result of consolidation in the number of harvesting operations. We also discuss the set of factors specific to management programs in the North Pacific that may have limited spatio-temporal revenue redistribution across community size or region following rationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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