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Short-run Economic Benefits from Water Quality Improvements: an Application to the American Lobster (Homarus Americanus) Fishery of Long Island Sound

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Abstract

This article proposes a quantitative investigation of the claim that improving water quality does not yield rents in commercial fisheries that are inefficiently managed. Specifically, a combined model of the resource dynamics and fishing effort is used to investigate the effects of policy scenarios on water quality improvements on the American lobster fishery in Long Island Sound. Results indicate that short-run positive rents can be extracted from the lobster fishery even when inefficiently managed, but they dissipate in the long-run as suggested by the economic literature.

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Notes

  1. I acknowledge that other benefits can arise from the rationalization of the fishery, such as increased productivity and growth in the regional economy (Steinback et al. 2008), but this is not the focus of this paper.

  2. V-notching consists in making an indentation (notch) at the base of the flipper that is at least 3-mm deep to identify egg bearing female lobsters. Notched lobsters cannot be legally landed or held.

  3. In the late summer of 1999 a large die-off of lobster occurred throughout the entire LIS. Biologists agreed that this event was triggered by a prolonged exposure to high water temperature and low dissolved oxygen suppressed the lobsters’ immune system making them more susceptible to diseases and infections (Pearce and Balcom 2005; Balcom and Howell 2006).

  4. Around 83,333 tags were bought back under the NY program by the end of 2002 (the tag allocation in 2001 was 380,000 tags). An additional 4,400 tags were bought back in 2007 with a total of 87,733 tags bought back in New York for a price of $ 12 each. In CT 58,410 tags were purchased at a price of about $18.7.

  5. Personal communication from Mrs. Kim McKown (NYS-DEC), Chair of the ASMFC American lobster Stock Assessment Subcommittee.

  6. Targets for NY waters are less stringent, hence those for CT encompass those for NY.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Penny Howell from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT-DEEP) and Kim McKown from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS-DEC) for making the data available and giving useful information on the American lobster population of LIS. Erik Lichtenberg and Lars Olson provided valuable comments and suggestions that helped to improve an earlier draft. Any remaining errors are mine.

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  1. Department of Economics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Michele Baggio

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  1. Michele Baggio
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Correspondence to Michele Baggio.

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Communicated by: Patricia Ramey-Balci

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Baggio, M. Short-run Economic Benefits from Water Quality Improvements: an Application to the American Lobster (Homarus Americanus) Fishery of Long Island Sound. Estuaries and Coasts 39, 1816–1826 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-016-0109-x

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