Catch More to Catch Less: Estimating Timing Choice as Dynamic Bycatch Avoidance Behavior

We model harvesters’ temporal participation behavior in a fishery with individual quotas for both a target and bycatch species. Harvesters make participation decisions given time-varying characteristics of the fishery (e.g., catch rates, price, and bycatch rates) and outside opportunities (e.g., other fisheries). A harvester’s problem is seasonally dynamic under the individual quota scheme because quota acts as an intertemporal budget constraint. We construct a theoretical model to describe how the shadow value of individual quota plays a role in a harvester’s decision and propose an empirical model that captures the dynamic effect of the seasonal quota usage. Our study finds support for the existence of dynamic bycatch avoidance: harvesters use the security provided by quota allocations to reduce harvesting around periods of high bycatch. Our policy simulation demonstrates that opening the season earlier could reduce bycatch while the main target catch is maintained due to temporal shift of quota usage.