Local, Global, Multi-Level: Market Structure and Multi-Species Fishery Dynamics

Price and market structures in fisheries change rapidly, now 40% of seafood is traded internationally and are associated with overharvesting of marine species. We have developed a bio-economic fishery model to address the pressing need of managing the interplay of different markets. We first regard local, multi-level and global markets individually and then analyze the effect of transitioning between markets on the exploitation of species and the stability of income. We find that in gradually globalizing markets, transition management needs to account for non-linear price changes since earlier policies may not be suitable after globalization. We hypothesize that short-term policies to ban harvest in the interest of species recovery benefit a local market in which incentives prevent overharvesting. In global markets we expect that sustained initiatives are needed to prevent overharvesting. Individual fisheries using contextualized models representing local ecological and trade structures may benefit from assessing the price dynamics presented in this analysis.