Category: Fishing

A fishing rod requires guides for the line so that it does not tangle and so that the line casts easily and efficiently. In this task, I will develop a mathematical model for the placement of line guides on a fishing rod.

Leo has a fishing rod with overall length 230 cm. The table shown below gives the distances for each of the line guides from the tip of his fishing rod.

Variables and parameters/constraints

The given data is the guide number from the tip of the fishing rod and the distance from the tip of the fishing rod. Since the guide number is an independent variable that should be taken along the X axis for plotting, and the distance along the Y axis. It is impossible for there to be a negative number of guides or a negative distance, therefore the guide number or the distance from the tip of the fishing rod cannot be negative. This means the whole graph should be restricted to the first quadrant.

The above data is plotted on the graph below:

From the graph it is clear that there is no linear relationship between the guide number and the distance from the tip. The relation between the guide number and the distance from the tip of the fishing rod can be a quadratic or a cubic function.

Quadratic function

The given data is entered in the GDC in two columns L₁ and L₂ and an equation for the quadratic regression equation is found out.

The input data in the TI 84 Plus

The quadratic equation

The values of a, b and c are corrected to 3 decimal places.

So:

• a= 1.244
• b = 8.458
• c = 0.839

The general quadratic function is y = ax² + bx + c, and can be written as:

Y = 1.244x² + 8.458x +0.839

The graph of the above equation is

Graph obtained from the GDC

The table of values of the quadratic equation where X represents the guide number from the tip of the fishing rod and Y1 is the distance from the tip of the fishing rod in centimeters.

A comparison of the data given and the values obtained from the equation is represented below in a tabular form and the mean of the differences of the two values are calculated to verify how close the obtained values are from the real one.

Combined graph (given data and the equation):

Cubic Function

The cubic equation is y = 0.063x³ + 0.392x² + 11x -2.286

The graph of the cubic function:

Table of values

Combined graph of the given values and the cubic equation

From the graph and the mean of the difference in the original values and the values from the equation of both cubic and the quadratic it is clear that the quadratic function is more appropriate. This is because the mean of the difference in the cubic function is higher. This means that the values obtained from the cubic function is not that much closer to the original values.

Mark has a fishing rod with overall length 300 cm. The table shown below gives the distances for each of the line guides from the tip of Mark’s fishing rod.

The graph of the above set of values is as follows:

To find the quadratic function for the given set of values, the GDC is made use of.

The steps are as follows:

Enter the data in the GDC in two columns (L1 and L2)

The quadratic equation is the following:

The quadratic model is y = 0.935x² + 7.72x +2.054

A combined graph of the given data and the new equation:

You are to explain each process I did in words [go back and above each graph or table, explain what you are doing]

Then, answer the below questions. Answer them directly where I stopped.

– Which of your functions found above best models this situation? Explain your choice.

My choice will be quadratic model since the fit is perfect, which is obvious from plotting graph of actual and estimate, and the average of errors is far lower as compared to cubic model.

Since the given data is modeled almost perfectly by quadratic equation, the same can be used for adding further guides after considering the length of the fishing rod.

The model fits the data and need not necessarily for data collected from various rods, though with same length. So this model can be used with caution and empirical study should not be ruled out.

– Use your quadratic model to decide where you could place a ninth guide. Discuss the implications of adding a ninth guide to the rod.

I would place a ninth guide at 178 cms away from tip. It fits well in the quadratic model. The only implication of adding ninth guide to the rod is that as the distance from the tip increases, it is going to be closer to the handle which might affect fishing. The idea is to optimum number of guides to line in the fishing rod. Not too many nor too little, given the length of the fishing rod.

Another model deciding optimal number of guides to the line of fishing rod depending on the results obtained from fishing would certainly help. Also, the parameters like the comfort attributes of the person who is fishing in using the fishing rod can be factored in.

– Mark has a fishing rod with overall length 300 cm. The table shown below gives the distances for each of the line guides from the tip of Mark’s fishing rod.

How well does your quadratic model fit this new data? What changes, if any, would need to be made for the model to fit this data? Discuss any limitations to your new model.

The cubic model designed to Leo’s fits Mark’s new data better than the quadratic one. What could be disturbing is that the length of the Mark’s rod is not same as Leo’s rod. This could imply that the cubic model fitted for smaller rod fits for lengthier rod. So, is the degree polynomial fitted relates to length of the rod? This will have to be found out with large number of dataset and proven empirically.

But, a new model based on that data is at best when the model is again quadratic. This again ignores the length of the fishing rod. What would be interesting is whether a model can devised to fit guides to line depending on the length of fishing rod. (Probably an exponential one?).

Fishing is the activity of catching fish in different ways for commercial and recreational purposes. The activity is a source of food with high protein nutrients compared with other animals (Duda, Jones, & Criscione, 2010). Catching fish can be done through different methods. Despite the benefits associated with fishing, the activity has several disadvantages.

Today, fishing is often run either as a family or corporate business for getting profit. Commercial (also known as industrial) fishing is done to catch fish and sell it for profit. But sometimes this business is not able to generate significantly big profits because of the dwindling fish stocks and strong competition within the industry. To satisfy the increasing demand for fish, companies use trawlers that let them enlarge the quantity of catch.

Trawling involves using nets that are pulled along the bottom of the sea to catch different types of fish. The use of modern communication equipment such as contemporary electronics to detect the presence of fish makes modern trawling effective. Here, Duda et al. (2010) note that recreational fishing or sports fishing can be done for competition or pleasure. Recreational fishing is done with a hook, line, rod, or reel. For terminal tackling swivels, floats, and weights are used. Sometimes, fishers also substitute baits for plastic lures. Besides, some can make artificial flies catch fish without using a hook.

A cold storage condition is necessary to keep the fish fresh. Modern storage facilities include refrigerated seawater, ice, and freezing blocks (Pauly, 2010). However, fish can undergo preliminary processing through washing and sorting equipment. Fish undergoes preliminary processing to produce canned fish, fish oil, and fish meal. The main aim of the entire process is to ensure that the fish is fit for human consumption (Pauly, 2010). Sometimes people prefer to eat fresh fish.

The process involves placing fish in cold, clean, and freshwater to keep it alive. In some countries such as China, it is usually kept in floating cages where the temperature is controlled, water filtered, and continuously replaced to keep it fresh and clean. However, once the fish has been taken out of the water, different techniques are used to inhibit bacterial activities that lead to spoilage and shorter shelf life.

Many families and corporate entities get involved in fishing as a recreational activity and for their livelihood. However, this process has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include recreation and self-fulfillment. People fish for fun, to improve their health, for self-esteem, and as a hobby (Duda et al., 2010). This kind of pastime enables people to feel better, improve their skills, create social bonds when they meet at fishing points and is used as a source of food.

Fishing activities reduce boredom, fatigue, and enhance patience. On the other hand, this kind of activity can cause environmental pollution, especially if fishers use chemicals such as cyanide to catch fish (Duda et al., 2010). Also, commercial fishing such as bottom trawling is extremely damaging to the environment in heavily fished areas. Trawlers remove sea plants and algae on coral rocks and the damage lasts for many years.

In conclusion, fishing is an activity that is practiced for recreation and commercial purposes. And despite the advantages and disadvantages of fishing, this activity remains popular.

References

Duda, M. D., Jones, M. F., & Criscione, A. (2010). Sportsman’s Voice: Hunting and Fishing in America. New York: Venture Publishers. Web.

Pauly, D. (2010). 5 Easy Pieces: How Fishing Impacts Marine Ecosystems. New York: Island Press. Web.

Introduction

Over 200 million gallons of oil leaked from the Macondo well in the Mexican Gulf in 2010. The oil surged from about 5,000 feet under the ground forming underwater clouds of oil and slicks on both the surface and ocean floor. The range of oil contamination in the Gulf of Mexico implied that there was a possibility of the spillage causing adverse effects on the ecosystem and marine life in the area (Jernelov 353-357).

Actually, numerous skeletons of vertebrates and invertebrates have been found in the region. Their death is associated with the oil spillage since the region had not recorded such a vast number of deaths before the spillage. Claims that the number of deaths of the marine animals and plants in the region is underrepresented have emerged, implying that it is higher than what is actually known today. One of the living things that were highly affected by the oil spillage is the dolphins (Jernelov 360).

The spillage affected the population dynamics of the dolphins in the region. It affected the breeding rate of the dolphins thus leading to reduction in the number of these wonderful animals in the region. Besides, most of the dolphins died due to diseases and lack of food because of the oil spillage.

The spillage interrupted the natural growth of marine plants in the region as well as development of other fish species. These fish species and plants act as the major sources of food for the dolphins (Jernelov 361). Oil spillage affected the dolphins both directly and indirectly.

The direct effects included ingestion of contaminated food, which resulted in death and serious illnesses. The indirect cases involved measures taken by the government and oil companies to curb oil spillage in the area. Some of the response activities affected the life of dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico. Apart from affecting the dolphins and other marine lives, the oil spillage adversely affected the fishing activity in the region.

The Gulf of Mexico is popular for supplying seafood to many parts of the world. Nevertheless, the spillage led to contamination of the seafood in the region calling for closure of fishing activities in the region (Jernelov 366). This paper will focus on the effects of oil spillage on dolphins and fishing activities in the Gulf of Mexico.

Effects of oil spillage on dolphins

Reduction in aquatic plants and preys

Dolphins depend on aquatic plants and other fish species for food. According to a study conducted along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, it was found that the spillage led to the reduction of the food available for dolphins in the region. It affected the food chain for the dolphins making them weak.

Besides, the spillage led to reduction in the number of preys available for dolphins thus affecting their breeding process (Williams et al. 228). The incidence occurred at a period when the breeding process for the dolphins was at the prime stage. The number of young dolphins found dead along the coastline evidenced this assertion.

Oil spilled on the surface of the ocean formed a cloud cover that made it hard for air and sunlight to penetrate to the bottom of the sea. Consequently, it was hard for marine plants to grow in the region. Besides, most of the fish species lacked oxygen as well as food leading to their death. It left the dolphins with limited food supply thus affecting their reproduction process (Williams et al. 230).

A study conducted by the East Carolina University students proved that the oil spillage affected the growth of zooplankton in the region. Most of the marine mammals depend on zooplanktons for food. Dolphins also depend on the zooplanktons for their survival.

Hence, interruption of the natural growth of zooplanktons meant an interruption in the survival of dolphins along the Gulf of Mexico (Williams et al. 231). A study on the zooplanktons in the area found that most of them had oil contamination. Even now, the zooplanktons continue being contaminated hence affecting the food web in the region, which is vital for dolphins.

The incidence that led to death of numerous dolphins during the 2011 cold season revolved on the previous oil spillage. By the time the cold season set on, the dolphins in the region were already weak because of limited food supply and bacterial infections caused by oil spillage in the area. It was hard for the dolphins to swim away to overcome the hurricane. Moreover, most of them could not withstand the cold and this element eventually led to most of them being washed away to the shore along the coastline (Williams et al. 231-233).

Until now, scientists posit that the spillage still poses a threat to the growth of fauna and flora in the gulf region. Most of the areas where dolphins used to breed in are lifeless implying that the number of dolphin births in the region is expected to decline for a long time. Absence of aquatic plants vital for the survival of dolphins implies that it will be hard for the dolphins to breed in the region.

High number of deaths of baby dolphins

Another clear effect of oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico on the dolphins is the number of deaths of baby dolphins reported in the area (Campagna et al. 393). This does not imply that the region does not witness cases of deaths of baby dolphins. Nevertheless, the number of deaths reported after the spillage incident is alarming, implying that the incident is the leading cause of these deaths. According to the director of the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies, the institute had never recorded such a vast number of deaths in the region.

The oil spillage led to numerous dolphins experiencing abortion while others got stillborns (Campagna et al. 394). The mother dolphins suffered trauma as they tried to push their young ones to the seashore in order to breathe. Previously, the region was reporting about one or two cases of stillborn dolphins. Nevertheless, the number of stillborns recorded after the spillage proved that the repercussion of the oil spillage on marine life in the area were devastating.

Traditionally, the dolphin stranding was high between February and March. This marks the breeding period for the dolphins. By evaluating the number of stillborns and infant dolphins that died before and after the spillage, it is evident that the spillage incident intensified the rate of stillborns and infant deaths in the region (Campagna et al. 395). Before the incident, the average number of deaths was at fourteen dolphins per year.

In 2010, the number increased to twenty-nine dolphins, but in 2011, the number increased to eighty-six. This comprised of stillborns, premature, or stranded infants. As most of the aquatic life is tainted with oil, it means that most of the foods eaten by adult dolphins in the region are contaminated.

The toxic food eaten by dolphins leads to the increase in the number of stillbirths in the region. Dolphins depend on a certain food chain for survival. The bigger fish feed on the smaller fish. On the other hand, the smaller fish feed on plankton. When the planktons are contaminated, the toxin finds its way up to the dolphins thus leading to cases of stillbirths and infant stranding. Dolphins have the capacity to detect oil.

Nevertheless, if they cannot evade the oil, it is hard for them to escape the affects of oil contamination. The spillage affected the gestation cycle of the dolphins leading to some aborting while others gave birth to stillborns. The spillage came at a time when most of the dolphins were still young. Hence, it was hard for the young dolphins to swim away from the contaminated region. Moreover, the young dolphins were unable to overcome the toxicities and thus succumbed.

Dolphins suffered serious illnesses

The spillage did not only affect the young dolphins but also had adverse effects on the older dolphins. It resulted in water contamination, reduction in the amount of light, and oxygen supply in the area. As dolphins continued inhaling contaminated air and feeding on contaminated foods, they started developing serious illnesses.

A study conducted on Bottlenose dolphins along the Barataria Bay proved that the dolphins were suffering from anemia, that is, most of them had lost weight while others exhibited symptoms of lung and liver diseases and low blood sugar (Campagna et al. 395-397).

The dolphins were into contact with the oily water for a long period. Reduction in oxygen levels in the water and water contamination led to the dolphins suffering from lung and liver diseases. In addition, the dolphins suffered from stress. The study showed that most of the dolphins had limited number of hormones responsible for suppressing stress (Campagna et al. 396). Additionally, they had weak immune systems and suffered from metabolic disorders.

In spite of these findings being preliminary, the researchers could come up with concrete conclusion that oil spillage was the main cause of the illnesses since dolphins living in areas that were not affected by the spillage did not exhibit any of such illnesses (Campagna et al. 396). According to scientists, other mammals exposed to oil portray similar symptoms implying that there is a high probability that these symptoms were due to the oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico (Campagna et al. 397).

Death of the dolphins

Apart from the serious illnesses reported on the dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, numerous stranding cases have been reported in the region since the oil spillage incident. Besides the number of young dolphins and the stillborns found dead along the coastline, numerous adult dolphins have been found stranded in the gulf (Fodrie and Heck 19). In 2011, the region reported about one hundred stranding cases of dolphins. Prior to the oil spillage, the region used to report about seventy-four cases per year.

Over the past two years only, the number of deaths among the dolphins has increased eightfold. Since the oil spillage incidence, the Gulf of Mexico has recorded over six hundred cases of dead dolphins along the Louisiana coastline. After a study was carried out to identify the cause of deaths, it was clear that most of the dolphins were suffering from liver and lung diseases, which resulted from exposure to oil (Fodrie and Heck 20).

It is yet not exceptionally clear if oil spillage is the main cause of the increased number of dying dolphins in the region. The number started going up in March 2010. At this time, the oil spillage accident had not occurred. Hence, the increase in the number of deaths right before the incidence implies that other factors might also be contributing to the stranding cases in the region (Fodrie and Heck 22-25).

Nevertheless, this does not rule out the contribution of oil spillage to the increase in the number of dolphin deaths in the Gulf of Mexico. The biggest number of deaths appears to occur in areas that were highly affected by the spillage. As the oil continued spreading into estuaries and bays, it posed a threat to bottlenose dolphins in the region. The untamed dolphins are not capable of detecting and evading oil.

Hence, the dolphins continued swimming into the areas contaminated with oil coming into direct contact with it and inhaling toxic fumes. The dolphins appeared disoriented, suffered from brain injuries, and ultimately most of them died (Fodrie and Heck 26). Bottlenose dolphins live in environments that expose them to risks. Most of them live in shallow waters along the coastline. They are adapted to these areas such that it is hard for them to relocate even after realizing that the area is no longer habitable.

Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conducted a necropsy on some of the stranded dolphins. The necropsy showed that some of the dolphins were suffering from brucellosis, a disease caused by environmental pollution (Fodrie and Heck 27-32). Brucellosis is not associated with a large number of dolphin deaths like morbillivirus.

Hence, the necropsy revealed that an environmental stressor was behind the numerous deaths. Some of the researchers posited that the dolphins got into direct contact with oil, and they were exposed to dispersants used to curb oil spread for a long time weakening their immune system. Eventually, they ended up suffering from bacterial infection.

Alternatively, oil spillage had an indirect effect on the dolphins. It led to reduction in the number of preys in the area leaving the dolphins with limited food supply (Fodrie and Heck 34). This element in return, exhausted the energy required by female dolphins making it hard for them to feed their babies.

Effects of the response activities

In response to the oil spillage incident, the American government and other stakeholders used varied response methods. For instance, to curb oil spread, the Regional Response Team allowed the use of Corexit as the dispersant (Levy and Gopalakrishnan 279). The Corexit is harmful to dolphins when ingested.

The chemical caused breathing complication to the dolphins. Apart from Corexit use, other measures taken to control oil spillage included the use of in-situ burning, skimmers, and booms. These measures had direct effects on marine life. As the activity took several days, it interrupted the normal way of life for the dolphins leading to their displacement (Levy and Gopalakrishnan 280-283).

Many dolphins had to relocate from their initial habitat as numerous vessels moved to the area to control oil spillage. The burning cut down on the amount of oil in the water. Nevertheless, it had other side effects that were detrimental to the dolphins. In spite of reducing the amount of oil in water, the burning process led to emission of toxic chemicals in the air.

The dolphins inhaled the toxic chemicals thus suffering from varied breathing problems (Levy and Gopalakrishnan 283-287). Besides, it led to the formation of lasting toxic compounds that float on the surface of the ocean. These compounds contributed to the demise of the aquatic life, which acts as the major source of food for the dolphins.

Besides the use of dispersants and in-situ burning to control oil spillage, there was conduction of seismic surveys to determine the possibility of other oil leakages. The machines used to carryout the seismic surveys were extremely noisy (Levy and Gopalakrishnan 291-298).

The noise from the machines caused disturbance to the dolphins eventually leading to displacement of most of them. Dolphins enjoy living in a serene environment. Apart from the ships and other transport vessels that visit the Gulf of Mexico, the dolphins had never encountered a lot of noise in the region.

Hence, the noise from the machines used in conducting seismic survey led to their disturbance thus leading to their displacement. In addition to disturbance, the machines used in controlling oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico led to numerous mammals suffering from hearing problems. Some dolphins suffered from hearing problems (Levy and Gopalakrishnan 301-315).

Effects of oil spillage on fishing

The effects of oil spillage in the fishing industry are still prevalent almost two years after the incidence. Prior to the spillage, anglers were recoding high catches along the Gulf of Mexico especially during May. However, since the oil spillage accident, things changed altogether.

Currently, fishing activities along the gulf are not as vibrant as they used to be and most of the people fear that this trend might take longer than expected (Gohlke et al.1062). In 2010, the number of fish caught in the Barataria estuary hit the lowest mark ever. Barataria estuary is one of the estuaries that were highly affected by the oil spillage.

A lot of oil accumulated in this estuary affecting the marine life. The low catch in the area is leading to the skyrocketing of the price of fish along the Gulf of Mexico (Gohlke et al.1065). Hence, most of the anglers hardly experience the costs of oil spillage since their income is still high despite the reduction in the number of fish they catch.

Accumulation of oil in the estuaries affected the life of most of the aquatic life. It was hard for zooplanktons to grow in these estuaries. Consequently, most of the fish in the estuaries died due to lack of food. Moreover, some fish died after feeding on toxic zooplanktons (Able and Fahay 69).

The death led to reduction in the number of fish in the estuaries thus affecting the volume of fish caught in the area. As the amount of food in the estuaries continued waning off, it became hard for fish to continue breeding. Fish normally thrive and multiply quickly in areas that have abundant zooplanktons.

Their fingerlings require adequate food for survival and growth. Nevertheless, oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico made it hard for zooplanktons to thrive in most of the affected estuaries. Eventually, most of the fingerlings died out of starvation. Besides the starvation, it was hard for the fingerlings to swim to areas with adequate food. Hence, most of them remained in the contaminated estuaries.

As oil accumulated on the surface of the ocean, it resulted in the reduction of oxygen level in water (Able and Fahay 71). Hence, the fingerlings did not get adequate oxygen supply. Additionally, they inhaled contaminated air leading to their death. This affected the number of fish in the estuaries. The anglers continued with their fishing activities thus reducing the number of fish in the estuaries.

Oil spillage led to closure of most of the fishing fields along the Gulf of Mexico. Anglers were asked to evacuate the area as the government and oil companies embarked on cleaning the contaminated area. The spilled oil spread in the ocean contaminating water as well as the zooplanktons. In return, when fish fed on the zooplankton, they became contaminated making them poisonous for human consumption. It was hard for the anglers to determine the range of contamination in the region (Able and Fahay 76).

Hence, they could not tell the areas where they could catch healthy fish. The government made the decision to ban fishing activities along the Gulf of Mexico until they were through with cleaning the area to ensure that people did not eat contaminated fish.

The spillage rendered most of the anglers idle. Oysters, finned fish, and crabs were the leading types of fish caught in the area. These sea creatures thrived in most of the areas contaminated with oil. Closure of fishing activities in the area meant that it was hard for people to continue harvesting these types of fish (Gohlke et al. 1066-1069).

Anglers had to come up with alternative measures to continue supporting their families. Oil spillage along the Gulf of Mexico led to diversification of the fishing activity in the area. Some of the fishermen opted to carryout their fishing activities deeper into the ocean. Hence, rather than concentrating on oysters, finned fish, and crabs, anglers started harvesting red snapper and tuna.

These types of fish live in deep sea where oil spillage was hard to reach. Besides the diversification of the fishing activities in the Gulf of Mexico, oil spillage adversely affected the fishing activities in the area in that most of the fishing boats were hired to facilitate in cleaning up the area (McCrea-Strub et al. 332).

Most of the people that once worked as anglers assumed the roles of cleaning the environment leaving a limited number of fishing boats and anglers to continue with the fishing activity. Some of the seafood processors in the region complained that the greatest problem was in getting anglers to harvest fish in areas that were still open to fishing (McCrea-Strub et al. 333).

For instance, some seafood companies claimed that in spite of the state allowing for the harvest of oysters in Houma, it was almost impossible since the oil companies had absorbed most of the anglers to help in cleaning the coastline. Moreover, they were using most of the fishing boats in the cleaning process.

The oil spillage had negative effects on local fishing interests. Kathryn Birren, the owner of Hernando Beach Seafood and several fishing boats, asserted that the spillage intensified the miseries that the local fishing industry was going through at the time. Immediately after the incident, stakeholders in the local fishing industry started realizing that the industry was doomed (McCrea-Strub et al. 334).

Even though the volume of the fish supplied in the industry did not go down immediately, returns from fish business started going down. Consumers started doubting the catch with some declining to purchase their fish from local suppliers. It was hard for people in Hernando County to ascertain the level of contamination in the area.

Besides, anglers could not identify the contaminated fish (McCrea-Strub et al. 336). Hence, most of the consumers feared that the oil contaminated all fish caught in the region thus failing to purchase them. In places like Houma, fishing firms are finding it difficult to convince consumers to buy their tuna and red snappers despite the fact that these types of fish are being caught far inside the ocean.

Anglers went for days without making any sales despite coming out with massive catches (McCrea-Strub et al. 336). Failure to make substantial sales contributed to most of the anglers abandoning their job, while boat owners freely agreed to lend their boats to help in cleaning the coastline.

The spillage incident profoundly affected the inshore fishing. Most of the inshore fishing grounds were closed due to contamination. Nevertheless, the offshore fishing grounds did not feel the effects of oil spillage. Most of the federal fishing grounds in the Gulf of Mexico remained open and fishing activities went on as usual (McCrea-Strub et al. 333). The offshore fishing helped in ensuring that the region did not suffer from a shortage in fish supply.

However, as the problem of controlling oil spillage in the area intensified, it became hard for anglers operating in offshore fishing grounds to continue making significant sales in the region. Consumers started doubting the quality of fish supplied with some claiming that they might also be tainted. This eventually affected the offshore fishing despite the government allowing fishing activities to go on in these areas.

Apart from commercial fishing, recreational fishing also takes place along the Gulf of Mexico. Numerous tourists visit the area for fishing games annually.

The recreational fishing in the Gulf of Mexico was not either spared by the oil spillage incident. Most of the tourists avoided visiting the gulf immediately they learnt about the contamination. Besides, contamination led to death of most of the fish in the region leaving the tourists with a limited number of fish to catch. Recreational fishing became no longer entertaining thus discouraging most of the tourists.

In addition, dispersants used to control oil spread were toxic making it hard for tourists to continue plying the area (McCrea-Strub et al. 335). To ensure that the contamination did not spread to other areas, the government restricted the use of fishing boats and any fishing activity on the affected area. Hence, tourists could not carryout their fishing sports in the region thus affecting the recreational fishing in the region.

Conclusion

The oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico had negative impacts on both the dolphins and fishing activities in the region. The spillage led to water contamination in the region thus affecting the aquatic life and reducing the number of preys in the region. In return, dolphins lacked food making it hard for them to multiply.

In addition, the oil spillage led to increase in the number of stillbirths and death of infant dolphins. The oil spillage also led to dolphins suffering from serious diseases. Most of the dolphins from the affected areas were underweight and suffered from anemia coupled with stress.

Apart from the diseases, there were numerous cases of dolphins stranding along the Gulf of Mexico. Oil contamination led to dolphins suffering from bacterial infection, which caused brucellosis. Some of the response activities undertaken to control oil spillage in the area had adverse effects on the dolphins. For instance, the noise produced by machines used to carryout seismic surveys disturbed the dolphins leading to their relocation.

The oil spillage affected fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. The contamination spread to the estuaries leading to a reduction in the number of fish. With time, the volume of fish caught in the area started decreasing. Most of the fishing grounds were closed down leaving the majority of anglers jobless. Some of the anglers had to look for alternative ways of earning their living.

Eventually, some anglers embarked on offshore fishing since the government did not authorize its closure. Besides, most of the anglers abandoned the fishing business and got absorbed by the oil companies that were helping in cleaning the area. It became hard for seafood companies to acquire fishing boats since the oil companies hired most of them to facilitate in cleaning the gulf.

Most of the consumers declined to purchase fish in the region claiming that they were contaminated with oil. Hence, fishing firms went for a long time without making substantial sales out of their catch. Finally, the Gulf of Mexico is popular for fishing sports, but the oil spillage led to closure of fishing sports in the area to give room for oil companies and the government to clean the area.

Works Cited

Able, Kenneth, and Michael Fahay. Ecology of Estuarine Fishes, Temperate Waters of the Western North Atlantic. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Print.

Campagna, Claudio, Frederick Short, Beth Polidoro, Roger McManus, Bruce Collette, Nicolas Pilcher, Yvonne De Mitcheson, Simon Stuart , and Kent Carpenter. “Gulf of Mexico oil blowout increases risks to globally threatened species.” Bioscience 61.5 (2011): 393-397. Print.

Fodrie, Joel, and Kenneth Heck. “Response of coastal fishes to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.” PLos ONE 6.7 (2011): 19-34.Print.

Gohlke, Julia, Dzigbodi Doke, Meghan Tipre, Mark Leader, and Timothy Fitzgerald. “A review of seafood safety after the deepwater horizon blowout.” Environmental Health Perspectives 119.8 (2011): 1062-1069. Print.

Jernelov, Arne. “The threats from oil spills: now, then, and in future.” A Journal of the Human Environment 39.6 (2010): 353-366. Print.

Levy, Jason, and Chennat Gopalakrishnan. “Promoting ecological sustainability and community resilience in the US Gulf Coast after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research 2.3 (2010): 279-315. Print.

McCrea-Strub, Ashley, Kristin Kleisner, Ussif Sumaila, William Swartz, Reg Watson, Dirk Zeller, and Daniel Pauly. “Potential impact of the deepwater horizon oil spill on commercial fisheries in the gulf of Mexico.” Fisheries 36.7 (2011): 332-336. Print.

Williams, Rob, Shane Gero, Lars Bejder, John Calambokidis, Scott Kraus, David Lusseau, Andrew Read, and Jooke Robbins. “Underestimating the damage: interpreting cetacean carcass recoveries in the context of the Deepwater Horizon/BP incident.” Conservation Letters 4.3 (2011): 228-233. Print.

Introduction

For centuries fish has been a mainstay of the diet of the people within the U.A.E. and, as a result, has brought about the creation of numerous industries which focus on harvesting, processing and delivering seafood to a vast consumer market within the region.

However, it should be noted that researchers such as Zoubir and Yahia (1999) state that industries such as these are not given carte blanche to do whatever they want in terms of harvesting the waters in and around the U.A.E. (Zoubir and Yahia, 1999). Certain limitations have to be implemented due to the potential for these industries to wipe out a finite ocean resource (Groeneveld et al., 2012).

What must be understood is that supplies of fish and other aquatic organisms take a certain amount of time to replenish. Unfortunately, due to the subsequent increase in demand for seafood as well as the advanced methods of capture that are being utilized at the present, unrestricted fishing practices often result in unsustainable local aquatic populations which subsequently die out (Groeneveld et al., 2012).

Evidence of this can be seen in the case of the blue fin tuna species as well as the North Atlantic salmon which have experienced considerable population declines to the extent that the W.T.O. as well as several advocacy groups have been protesting their continued use as a food product due to the very real possibility of extinction.

Due to instances such as this, the necessity of implementing proper policies and guidelines to create catch quotas has been at the forefront of present-day government legislation involving the local fishery industry within the U.A.E.

It is based on this that this paper will examine the current policies being utilized for fish within the U.A.E. and what these policies have achieved in terms of creating the necessary catch limitations to ensure sustainable fishing practices.

Through this study, it is expected that readers will develop a greater understanding of current import/export practices within the U.A.E. involving fish as well as whether there exists any potential problems within the fishery industry that the government should focus on in order to increase the effective and efficient utilization of aquatic resources in order to reduce cost and wastefulness.

Background of the Study

Fish as a Staple of the Human Diet

For a large percentage of the current global population fish represents a readily available and above all affordable means of sustenance when compared to other food types. Based on comparative global prices it can be seen that certain species of domesticated fish such as milkfish, cod, and dory are actually consumed by the metric ton on an almost daily basis due to their relatively low prices.

While it may be true that beef, chicken and pork have a relatively higher rate of consumption the fact still remains that in most markets fish that are either caught on the open sea or produced through aquaculture have a relatively lower price as compared to most cuts of beef, chicken or pork.

In some cultures, particularly those in the Middle East, fish is actually consumed more than beef, chicken or pork due to their geography, which places them near larger sources of fish as compared to cultures located in Central Europe or the central states in the U.S.

Taking this into consideration it can be seen that fish has a different value depending on the geographic location of the culture that consumes it. For some cultures various dishes based on fish can be considered an integral part of their cultural tradition, while for others fish can be considered nothing more than a miscellaneous option between chicken, beef, pork or vegetables.

Sustainability

Sustainability refers to the utilization of resources and the production of goods/services in a manner that takes into consideration not only the impact of a company on the environment but also its ability to ensure that the resources it utilizes are sourced in a manner that ensures that they can be renewable.

By doing so, this creates a system where costs are reduced, efficiency is increased and the company presents a far better public image due to the general consensus that implementing sustainable practices creates a beneficial effect for the general public.

As such, sustainable supply chains implement the aforementioned principles into a cohesive whole in every aspect of the supply chain, whether it is the sourcing of raw materials, the manufacturing of goods/services or the distribution of such outputs to consumers. From the perspective

Abbasi and Nilsson (2012) an organization with a truly successful sustainable supply chain could theoretically remain in business forever (depending on continued consumer demand for its products of course) which lends credence to the beneficial effects a sustainable supply chain could have for a company (Abbasi and Nilsson, 2012).

One example of a sustainable supply chain is when a company’s management orientation is evidenced by a business model where economic goals are compatible with environmental and social goals. In this particular version of a successful supply chain a company does not focus entirely on a competitor oriented approach (though this is also important) rather what is being accomplished is that it focuses on developing a business model that utilizes Corporate Social Responsibility (C.S.R.) as the basis behind its actions.

Since C.S.R. is a form of internal self-regulation, a company that implements this focuses on reducing adverse environmental practices while at the same time develops positive social effects. A second example of a sustainable supply chain is when sustainability becomes integrated in the organization where the organization has both a managerial orientation toward sustainability and an innovation capability.

This means that internal developments within the organization focus on developing methods wherein processes become more efficient, waste is reduced, resources are obtained from renewable sources and the focus of the company is towards the development of practices that result in positive environmental effects.

Objectives

The main objectives of this study consist of the following:

1. To examine the current policies for fish and fisheries involving seasonal and species limitations.
2. Determine the extent by which the policies that have been developed are actually effective in ensuring sustainable fishing practices.
3. Examine the current import/export regulations of fisheries.
4. Investigate whether there are any inherent problems/discrepancies in government policies and regulations.
5. Create a means by which any identified problems can be succinctly addressed with an effective strategy that would resolve the issues.

Methodology

Introduction to Methodology

This section aims to provide information on how the study will be conducted and the rationale behind employing the discussed methodologies and techniques towards augmenting the study’s validity. In addition to describing the research design, this section will also elaborate on instrumentation and data collection techniques, validity, data analysis, and pertinent ethical issues that may emerge in the course of undertaking this study.

Data Analysis

The primary method of data analysis for this study will consist of document analysis. As described in the book “Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation” by Merriam (2009), document analysis primarily consists of examining academic articles, journals and books as well as various analytic and statistical reports in order to investigate a particular topic or issue.

This method of analysis primarily concerns itself with the presentation of data in support of an argument through a summary and subsequent explanation of all the literature and statistical references collected by the author.

This method of analysis was chosen since it would enable the most efficient investigation of the data necessary for this study as well as enables the researcher to easily present the needed data without undue complications such as scheduling issues or noncompliance with the objectives of the research which is often seen in interview/questionnaire-based studies.

Data Collection

Data collection for this study will actually be quite straightforward, the researcher will collect information from a variety of online databases such as EBSCOhost and Jstore as well as through other sources such as published books and articles (when available).

Online statistical databases created by the U.A.E. will also be utilized in order to collect data over the past 60 years regarding catch rates and present-day catch limitations that are being imposed on local fisheries within the U.A.E.

It is expected that through these databases an accurate representation of the current state of the fishery industry within the U.A.E. can be created.

Ethical Considerations

Possible ethical considerations that may arise through this study consist of the following:

1. The potential for unintentional plagiarism through verbatim lifting of information, arguments and points of view from researched source material.
2. The use of unsubstantiated information taken from unverifiable or nonacademic resources (ex: internet articles).
3. The use of a biased viewpoint on issues which may inadvertently result in an alteration of the data collection results.
4. Presentation of data without sufficient corroborating evidence or a lack of citation.
5. Falsifying the results of the research for the benefit of the initial assumptions of the study.
6. Using views and ideas without giving due credit to the original source.

According to various research guides, “Ethics refers to the appropriateness of your behavior in relation to the rights of those who become the subject of your work, or are affected by it”. It is based on this that the researcher will attempt to perform proper research ethics on this paper by actively avoiding all the listed possible ethical issues that may arise in order to ensure the validity and veracity of the study results.

Results and Analysis

Fishing within the U.A.E

It is quite interesting to note that despite being one the richest and technologically advanced regions within the world, the U.A.E. actually has little in the way of large scale local fisheries. Most of the vessels utilized for fishing within the waters off the Emirate are relatively small scale with technological developments such as trawling through the use of large nets being banned.

While from a certain perspective the U.A.E. does not rely on its fishery industry due to its rich oil reserves, the fact remains that the region considers fishing as a form of regional heritage and, as such, various policies have been enacted which have created a state of rudimentary management as compared to the state of affairs that existed 40 years ago where no effective methods of management were implemented.

Despite the artisanal (i.e., heritage-based) fishing that exists within the U.A.E., it has been shown that nearly 90 percent of its fish stocks have experienced a significant decline in the past two decades.

Not only that, combined with the fact that vessel registration within the Emirate has seen a 25% decline is indicative of the fact that not only is there a decline in the availability of local species, the local fishery industries have actually noticed this and, as a result, have scaled back their operations resulting in a scant number of vessels actually fishing the local U.A.E. coastline.

In trying to understand the decline of fish stocks within the region it is important to note that within the past 30 years, the U.A.E. has actually experienced phenomenal growth in terms of industrial and commercial property development. This has impacted not only the region’s interior but has actually encompassed aspects of its coastline as well wherein various land reclamation projects have in effect significantly altered the bio-system of established aquatic species.

Researchers such as Tourenq and Launay (2008) have pointed out that the artificial expansion of the U.A.E. coastline without heed for the possible environmental ramifications would definitely have had some form of impact on the local fish population (Tourenq and Launay, 2008).

As Tourenq and Launay (2008) explains, coastlines act not only as breeding areas and sanctuaries but are also the local of a vast percentage of the local migration patterns of aquatic sea populations. The development that has occurred within the U.A.E. has upset such a balance resulting in the declining fish populations that are seen at the present (Tourenq and Launay, 2008).

Current State of the U.A.E Fisheries Industry

Based on an examination of recent catches, it can be seen that the following fish species are the primary catches caught off the local coastline by the fishery industry:

1. Groupers – consists of 24.7 percent of all caught fish
2. Jacks- consists of 16.5 percent of all caught fish
3. Emperors – consists of 25 percent of all caught fish
4. Sweet lips – consists of 10.5 percent of all caught fish
5. Scads – consists of 5.2 percent of all caught fish

While it may be true that artisanal fishing vessels in the form of dhows (wooden vessels that are 15 meters in length) or outboard powered vessels “tarads” (normally 8 to 10 meters in length) are the primary means by which the local fishing industry gets its “catch” the fact remains that combined with the current state of coastline development within the country, the means by which the local fishery industry catches fish is contributing significantly to the continued reduction of fish species within the Emirate.

The reason behind this is quite simple, in combination with traditional practices the local fishery industry at times attempts to utilize banned methods of fishing, which results in considerable reductions in the local population to such a degree that the methods utilized are in effect unsustainable in the long run.

First and foremost, the use of traditional fixed stake rake nets, which are called “hadra” has lead to the catch of fish that are less than the optimum size. These fish, usually juveniles, have yet to spawn and contribute to the local fish population and, as such, their capture is incredibly detrimental towards the continued survival of local species.

The problem with hadra’s is that the netting they utilize in catching fish has not changed in design in well over 100 years. This type of netting is usually meant to catch as many fish as possible without heed for size and, as such, has holes which do not let juveniles pass through as compared to a majority of modern-day fishing nets which are more discriminate in the type of fish they are able to catch.

While the Environmental Research and Wildlife Development Agency (ERWDA) has attempted to establish a variety of new regulations limiting the types of netting utilized as well as the size of fish caught the problem really boils down to the fact that there is an insufficient means of enforcement within the region to facilitate and effective means of enforcement for the agency’s policies.

Aside from the use of hadras, there has been a significant increase in the use of illegal trawling nets in order to catch Spanish mackerel during its fishing seasons.

The main problem with trawling is similar to that of the hadras since they are indiscriminate in the types of fish caught, however, unlike the hadras trawling nets are able to catch thousands of pounds of fish at a time and, as a result, this has lead to further reduction in local fish stocks since insufficient numbers of fish have been left behind in order to help boost the population.

Another problem with the local fishery industry is related to the fact that no official numbers have been collected regarding the amount of catches per fishery vessel within the Emirate.

Despite the fact that most of the fish caught is funneled through Abu Dhabi, there has been an insufficient level of investigation at the local level in order to determine whether local fisheries are staying within the catch allotments assigned to them by the government.

As a result, there is a very real possibility that overfishing is occurring which contributes to the current decline in the local aquatic species.

Discussion

Management Efforts in Resolving the Identified Issues

Some environmental management efforts to resolve to the identified issues initially came in the form of freezing the amount of licenses granted to new fishermen in 2003, yet by 2004 licenses were allowed to be issued again despite the fact that there has been no sufficient recovery on the part of the local ocean life.

Other such limitations have come in the form of a limitation on the number of fishing traps (called gargoor) to 100 per boat (Al-Qaydi, 2008). However, despite this limitation on the number of traps, there was no limitation set on other types of fishing gear per vessel (i.e., nets), which enabled the fisheries to continue fishing with no apparent reduction in the amount of fish caught.

Other restrictions attempted by the local government came in the form of requiring a U.A.E. national to be on board the boat when it attempted to fish. While such a tactic worked initially, the lack of enforcement on the part of the government when it came to ensuring that U.A.E. nationals were actually on the boats themselves resulted in subsequent “ghost fishing trips” occurring wherein nationals claimed they were on the boat but were in fact nowhere near the boat in the first place (Al-Qaydi, 2008).

While the U.A.E. was able to introduce legislation to resolve the identified issues with its local fishery industry in the form of Federal Law number 23, the fact remains that there is an insufficient structure for enforcement and investigation at the local level. Catches are not monitored on a per boat basis but rather on the amounts found within the drop off centers and declared by the boats themselves resulting in the very real possibility of catch falsification in order to show compliance with local regulations.

Not only that, with no search and seizure mandates as well as sufficiently harsh criminal prosecutions on individuals who violate the established mandates on catch limitations within the coastlines of the Emirate, this shows that the current means by which the local aquatic environment is being protected is only a “show”.

There is no means by which enforcement is created and established with various public ministries merely patching up the damage rather than directly addressing the issue.

As a result of such actions, despite the attempts of the local government to create a sustainable fishing environment within the U.A.E., the fact remains that the lack of government willingness to actually establish concrete measures of enforcement and compliance has made it so that it is likely that fish populations within the U.A.E. will continue to plummet as a direct result of overfishing and the continued rapid development of construction projects along its coastlines (Al-Qaydi, 2008).

Resolving the Problems

Aside from implementing more stringent management and regulatory procedures on local fisheries, the U.A.E. government, along with various private enterprises, has actually actively sought to help address the problem of overfishing through alternative methods. One of these methods actually involves the raising of juvenile fish by the thousands at onshore facilities, which are then released into the wild to help address the issue of dwindling supplies of fish.

This program, which was enacted by the Ministry of Environment and Water’s Marine Resources Research Center has been effective in helping to temporarily curb the decline of various fish species within the past few years. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the fishing catch within the U.A.E. ha decline from 118,000 metric tons in 1999 to 90,000 tons at the present, the fact remains that the rate of reproduction of local species has yet to reach a sufficient level to become sustainable in the long run.

Adding to this problem is a general lack of public concern surrounding the issue of declining fish populations within the Emirate. What must be understood is that a vast majority of the current fish stock within many of the U.A.E.’s markets and grocery stores are actually imported from other countries and regions.

As a result, the general public has not “felt” so to speak the declining fish availability since they are used to having a large and prolific choice of fish as a direct result of international importers.

The end result of such a state of affairs is a slow and at times redundant introduction of new juvenile fish species by the Ministry of Environment and Water’s Marine Resources Research Center which do not have the desired impact due to the lack of general public support for a respite in the amount of fish caught locally (Fujiwara, 2012).

Other attempts at reducing the amount of fish caught have come in the form of establishing small fishing farms within various areas along the U.A.E. coastline in order to help raise the needed fish in a more sustainable fashion. Such attempts have actually proven to be immensely successful and have even led to the introduction of new types of fish species being introduced into the Emirate as seen in the case of the various.

Summary and Conclusion

The defining factors of a successful society in the modern-day era has been the level of industrial and technological achievement from which that society derives a certain degree of economic success and creates the trappings of what is known as the “modern-day lifestyle”.

Societies all over the world continue to strive to reach this supposed pinnacle of success; yet, the price for reaching such a goal often comes through significant environmental deterioration as seen in the case of the U.A.E.’s local fishery industry. The inherent source of the problem is not the process of industrialization itself, but the attitudes many societies have developed in response to the supposed “necessity” of reaching the goal of “modern-day success”.

People are not concerned whether or not the continued development of the U.A.E. coast leads towards the destruction of the local aquatic ecosystem nor are they overly concerned with the impact of overfishing on the local marine life, instead they are more than happy to relegate such responsibilities to the local government which itself is unwilling to take the necessary actions in fear of being labeled “too harsh” by local critics.

This is particularly troublesome when taking into consideration the difficulties involved in a conjoined societal effort to implement new practices of sustainability for the fishery industry when there is mutual distrust as a direct result of the social stratification brought about by industrialization.

Based on the various arguments presented, it can be seen that it is not the process of industrialization itself that has lead to unsustainable fishery practices and the deterioration of the local coastline environment, rather, it is the perspective of U.A.E. society at the present wherein people believe that it is necessary to industrialize in order to achieve what is perceived as a modern-day lifestyle regardless of the possible costs that is the main culprit behind the problems seen today.

Recommendation

As the demand for fish grows so too will the necessity of increasingly larger means of fish extraction and delivery to supply such a demand. The inherent problem with this is that the price of finite resources continues to increase over time as demand grows. There will eventually come a time where the U.A.E. will have to deal with the dwindling supply of fish and the aftereffects that continued construction and overfishing have caused on the environment.

There are already squabbles breaking out between India, China and Egypt regarding sharing the aquatic resources that feed into their respective territories with no end in sight in finding an effective solution. It is based on this that the researcher for this project advocate better methods of aquatic species conservation as well as a certain degree of self-imposed limitations on demand growth through the following methods so as to ensure that fish resources are not completely depleted within the coming years:

Use of Propaganda to Incite Public Opinion Towards Conservation

Propaganda is a method of communication which is used to influence the attitudes of specific groups of individuals towards a particular cause or position. In essence, instead of a sense of impartiality propaganda actually presents information in such a way so as to influence an audience through selective dissemination of information in order to create an emotional rather than a rational response to certain issues.

What must be understood is that propaganda utilizes elements such as loaded questions, partial synthesis or even lying by omission in order to gain the desired response. On the other hand, propaganda is also used in various public information campaigns by governments for positive effects such as the Australian governments fight against illegal downloads connoting their use with stealing and its use by the U.S. during the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq as a supposed “war on terror”.

In essence, the use of propaganda and its effects can be associated with the ethical reasoning behind its usage. It is based on this that a strategy utilizing propaganda can be utilized in order to help generate awareness and action among members of the general public within the U.A.E. in order to help them understand the current problems that the local fish population face and the sacrifices that must be done in order to resolve such an issue.

It is expected that through the proper propaganda campaigns general awareness will increase to such an extent that the government will have no choice but to implement far more stringent measures of control over the fishery industry to appease the clamor from the local population.

Implementing Methods of “Green” (i.e. Sustainable) Construction and Development

The term “green” means the utilization of technologies, ideals or concepts that put environmental stewardship at the forefront of one’s actions. In other words it is an attempt at modifying one’s behavior towards a more environmentally “friendly” course of action.

This means pursuing strategies involving the utilization of recyclable material, conserving resources rather than wasting them through negligent use, and finally advocating the pursuit of methods of environmental stewardship both in technologies used and in social action.

In a way going “green” can be described as a form of ethos, the concept of ethos can be described as a form of guiding beliefs that are an inherent part of a community or nation’s character. It is used as a guide that influences a person’s behavior to such an extent that by examining the ethos behind a culture you can determine how they will react based on a given situation.

It is based on this that it can be assumed that going “green” is an ideology that one attempts to follow due to it possessing characteristics that are appealing to a person’s inherent character and set of ideals. Such an aspect can be implemented in the case of the U.A.E. when it comes to the construction and development of its various coastal projects.

A variety of ecological sustainable practices can be implemented, which help to promote the continued health of the environment rather than destroy it. It is expected that should such “green” project developments occur, it can help to reduce the damage done by the recklessly destructive coastline construction that had occurred previously.

Reference List

Abbasi, Maisam, and Fredrik Nilsson. 2012. “Themes and challenges in making supply chains environmentally sustainable.” Supply Chain Management 17, no. 5, pages 517-530. Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost .

Al-Qaydi, Saif S. 2008. “Tradition, Change, and Government Policy in the United Arab Emirates East Coast Fishing Community.” American Geographical Society’s Focus On Geography 51, no. 1: 1-6. Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost .

Fujiwara, Masami. 2012. “Demographic Diversity and Sustainable Fisheries.” Plos ONE 7, no. 5: 1-14. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost .

Merriam, S. 2009. Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation, John Wiley & Sons, pages 10 – 50.

Groeneveld, JC, SP Kirkman, M Boucher, and D Yemane. 2012. “From biomass mining to sustainable fishing — using abundance and size to define a spatial management framework for deep-water lobster.” African Journal Of Marine Science 34, no. 4: 547-557. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost .

Tourenq, Christophe, and Frédéric Launay. 2008. “Challenges facing biodiversity in the United Arab Emirates.” Management Of Environmental Quality: An International Journal 19, no. 3: 283-304. GreenFILE, EBSCOhost .

Zoubir, Yahia H. 1999. “The United Arab Emirates.” Thunderbird International Business Review 41, no. 2, pages 215-229. Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost .

Fishing, especially recreational fishing, is considered to be one of the most famous activities all over the world: people like to spend the vast majority of their time in order to use their imagination, attract the attention of other people, and catch as much fish as possible. There are lots of techniques, which may be used during fishing; however, it is crucially important to decide what fish you are going to catch in order to choose the best tool to achieve the positive results only.

For example, when we talk about shark finishing, people have to think about proper techniques in order not only to catch a shark but also to hold it for a long period of time. It is necessary to admit that recreational shark fishing has its own pros and cons, which have to be mentioned and discussed.

People satisfaction after a shark is caught is good indeed, however, recreational shark finishing has lots of negative outcomes for both, sharks and humans: people are not always ready to catch a shark and take the necessary steps to protect themselves from sharks’ reaction of being caught, and sharks, even being the most terrible predators in water, still carry out significant functions, and their disappearance causes numerous changes within underwater life.

In fact, recreational shark fishing was not that popular until 1975. People did not find this very activity rather safe and significant in their lives, and preferred to catch some smaller fish in order to feed and entertain. However, the movie Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg in 1975, attracted the attention of numerous fishers and those people, who liked extreme and danger. The story of one huge white shark amazes lots of people, lots of professional fishermen wanted to catch one of those sharks, which were presented on the screen in order to save their families and not to be afraid to spend some time in water.

Of course, Jaws played a significant role in the development of recreational shark fishing; however, it was not the only one. The point is that people may catch a shark without a boat and use rods or reels, settled on a bridge or dock. So, if you want to feel something really exciting and unusual, you are welcome to buy all the necessary equipment and visit one of the nearest beaches in order to try own luck.

But still, people should take into consideration certain facts concerning sharks in order to comprehend how much harm they can do by such frequent recreational shark fishing. Lots of researches prove that more than 100 million sharks are caught and killed every year. In other words, 11 000 sharks are killed by people every hour. (Bryant, n.d.) It is necessary to mention that these numbers are all about both commercial and recreational shark fishing.

If we talk about recreational shark fishing only, it is better to use the facts, offered by the US National Marine Fisheries Service: they admit that more than 12 million sharks and skates were killed during the year of 2004, however, lots of recreational shark fishers prefer to release caught sharks back to the ocean. (Bryant, n.d.) Sharks face too many problems while reproducing: they cannot find a proper sexual partner during a long period of time; they spend much energy to give a birth to one pup and should have a rest; they do not reproduce too many pups in one time (from 2 to 20); and, finally, they reproduce only one time in a year.

(Berman 26) So, if people do not stop recreational fishing, it is quite possible that with time, there will be no shark to catch at all. There are so many fishing tournaments, which require senseless killing of sharks in order people may tickle own and someone’s vanity. These tournaments bring much money for people with different social status, the only thing that is required is proper equipment and certain sum of money to become a participant of the tournament and demonstrate the others that you are ready and have enough financial support to start your affair.

Of course, money will be always a good reason to participate in such tournaments, however, it is impossible to buy everything, and proper condition of ocean is something that turns out to be rather significant to the lives of any being in this world. This is why people should not destroy their environment in order to win more money or prove someone that they are the best in something. “Sharks are more vulnerable to extinction than most other fish. For many, recovery may take decades after fishing pressure is reduced.” (Chivian, 267)

Well, we have already proved why recreational shark fishing is dangerous for sharks and causes bad outcomes. However, to demonstrate that shark fishing is not the best kind of entertainment, it is better to talk about human victims and injuries. The major point is that sharks’ behavior is very hard to predict; sharks’ reactions to human actions.

There are more than 370 kinds of sharks in this world (Richardson & Schaefer 5) and it is impossible to investigate the behavior of each shark even for the most sophisticated scientists. This kind of behavior remains one of the most mysterious ones in this world. Shark’s attacks and attitude to other fish in the ocean have rather different character. So, recreational shark fishing is considered to be one of the most dangerous kinds of sport even for the most desperate people and adrenaline lovers. It may happen that sharks eat people, of course, it happens rather rarely, but still, it may happen.

Sometimes, many sharks’ fishers return to their homes with numerous injuries of different levels. This is one more reason to think thoroughly whether shark fishing is worth or not. Many people still think that great white shark is the most terrible and the biggest shark in the world. However, researches demonstrate that a basking shark and a whale shark turn out to be bigger; their length is about 12 – 15 meters. (Cerullo et al., 2006) Have you ever met a fish that is longer than a school bus? Hardly, this is why it is better to be rather careful while shark fishing and be sure about own courage and skills to start fishing.

In general, fishing may be regarded as both good and bad activity of people. First of all, it is necessary to take into consideration that shark fishing requires certain equipment and skills. Without both of them, recreational shark fishing may become rather frustrating for people and bring not quite positive results. Also, people should remember that sharks are significant elements of our every day life: oceans and all creatures inside cannot exist without sharks’.

If something happen to oceans, people will also feel certain changes and face numerous troubles. I find this reason as one of the strongest. It is better to observe sharks as a good source for the necessary treatment, as sharks have some substances, which turn out to be rather useful for people. Of course, shark fishing is bad because it may cause sudden death of the fishers. The behavior of sharks is hard to predict, this is why lots of people faces numerous problems being too close to sharks.

Some people still find money as a good reason to start their fishing on sharks. Of course, shark fishing tournaments present great opportunities to people to earn more money, however, they are not sure that their money may be spend on medical treatment that will be necessary after such kind of fishing. So, it is possible to fish and catch sharks, grounding on commercial or medical purposes, or, finally, to save own life; however, recreational shark fishing has more negative sides than positive, and we should keep it in mind.

Works Cited

Berman, Ruth. Sharks. Lerner Publications, 2009.

Bryant, Charles, W. How Many Sharks Are Killed Recreationally Each Year – and Why? 2009.

Chivian, Eric, Bernstein, Aaron, Wilson, Edward, O. Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Cerullo, Mary, M., Rotman, Jeffrey, L., and Wertz, Michael. The Truth about Great White Sharks. Chronicle Books, 2006.

Richardson, Adele, D. and Schaefer, Lola, M. Sharks: Hunters of the Deep. Capstone Press, 2001.

Abstract

The oceanic ecosystem is very crucial to human beings’ survival. About fifty percent of humans’ protein requirements come from the blue economy. The rapid growth of people’s population implies the need to ensure a sustainable aquatic ecosystem. Several measures already exist to promote sustainability in the area. However, a majority of the currently existing marine conservation guidelines do not have adequate provisions for research activities to inform best practices in the area. Marine conservation methods like the universal documentation of fishing vessels with a distinct global system number, creation of marine protected zones, and the worldwide catch share measures all lack effective research provisions as of now. Providing exempted fishing permits is one of the possible policy-based solutions that can help marine research to be steered around existing fishing policies.

Introduction

Fishing protocols on undertaking marine studies pose a significant problem in developing effective research-based best practices to promote real sustainability in the marine ecosystem. America and several other states around the world lead the endeavors to make the oceanic ecosystem safe and viable. The various agencies and states use a wide range of policies that directly and indirectly lead to the intended results. A major breakthrough in the war against marine ecosystem’s destruction concerns the establishment of protected zones, such as fisheries and marine parks, both international and state-based. Such formations offer protection to marine species considered endangered, together with the other marine ecosystem for sustainability purposes. The success of the setups, however, remains myopic to date due to several issues, among them the absence of informed scientific advice concerning things like best practices. The excessive fishing regulations on conducting marine research, particularly, bear significant blame for this problem. That is why the world today needs to enact effective policies within the fishing regulations to promote better results.

The desire to protect the environment and promote sustainability cuts across several aspects, including the once neglected marine ecosystem. The realization that the current trends in oceanic bionetwork threaten a shortage in the fundamental water-related protein source for the future population is a major reason for the changes (Hornfeldt, 2018). Today, the world has about seven billion people, with the numbers expected to grow with time. The amount of people on Earth already exerts excessive pressure on the available natural resources, particularly those acquired from water. Overconsumption and several other human-related facets, like pollution, directly affect the supply of marine resources. Such explains the need for sustainability in the area, lest the future generations lack some critical sources of basic nutrients. Sustainability involves the supervision of the globe’s fish stocks through effective control of ecosystems and habitats’ well-being (Hornfeldt, 2018). Policies offer one of the best ways to promote sustainability. However, such (policies) require substantial science-supported knowledge to offer a real impact. Governments around the globe already exhibit the commitments to impose marine sustainability compliance. The gap in knowledge acquisition on the matter, therefore, challenges the degree to which sustainability can be realized.

Background

The struggle to end or manage overfishing, combat illegal fishing, safeguard marine habitats and ecosystems, and protect sharks present in the global water bodies lacks significant knowledge on several things. For example, the establishment of fisheries and marine parks seem to deliver results at reduced rates relative to the anticipated margins (Nielsen et al., 2018). The world stands to suffer significantly if the present situation facing the marine ecosystem is left unattended. That is because the issue of sustainability will only remain but a dream. Oceans and seas are in danger due to the excessive loss of habitats and ecology. Pollution, climate change, and natural deaths also pose a great danger to the bionetwork. Nielsen et al. (2018) say that establishing parks to protect sharks, dolphins, and other endangered water-based species is pointless if the world lacks the necessary knowledge to manage them. Based on the scholars’ findings, lots of fish and marine species continue to die and get extinct, even in the protected areas, because of the lack of adequate knowledge to manage them.

The existence of strict regulations safeguarding the already available marine conservation sites make it hard for scholars and researchers to gather several key pieces of information and knowledge about the oceanic ecosystem. Many fisheries around the world, for example, only allow measured fishing activities, while controlling almost all the other activities, including the conductance of beneficial research works on the conservations (Stouten, Polet, Aimé & Gellynck, 2017). The issue exists as a big mistake, as science-supported knowledge is required almost on a daily basis to advance the matter. That is why there is a dire need to engage scientists on the issue of oceanic bionetworks’ management. Granting the scholars the opportunity to collect samples on the marine ecosystem provides the first step in bridging the current conservation information gap.

The failure to investigate the size of sharks’ population and their specific varieties, for example, challenges the realization of balance between the various species of fish in many fisheries. Helmond et al.’s (2020) report confirm this argument by showing the extended consumption of sharks in various parts of the world, including in some areas where policies protecting marine creatures exist. Besides identifying the current trends in the marine ecosystems, science-based investigations on the bionetwork promise to provide critical information concerning the possible future events touching on the marine environment. As such, it is obvious that scientific investigations play a major part in the effective management of global fisheries to realize sustainability. That is why creating a policy-based room for scientific studies on water conservatism is a must-make move if the endeavor to protect the ecosystem is to realize real fruition.

Current Policy Landscape

Almost all the methods adopted by different nations and regions touch on the issues of marine protection purpose to mainly regulate the amount of marine creatures caught. Many fisheries around the world, for example, have laws that control the time and period when fishing activities take place and when such should stop within a given time, say a year. Other measures utilized by the various global establishments focusing on protecting the marine ecosystem endeavor to establish marine parks, where almost zero research operations occur. A deeper look into the various marine conservation guidelines, thus, shows the difficulty of conducting marine research around the present-day fishing policies. Such should, however, not be the case in case the world purposes to develop transformational marine conservation practices.

The present discussion looks at some of the existing marine conservation guidelines and their potential benefits and weaknesses. The work aims to suggest a possible policy change to help marine research being conducted around the existing fishing policies. The discussion proceeds by describing the various marine conservation practices, their weaknesses, and strengths before providing an alternative strategy to save the situation. Some of the covered conservation tactics include the universal documentation of all fishing vessels with a distinct global system, the creation of marine protected zones, and the worldwide catch share measures. The discussion shows the application of the three methods in different parts of the world and how they fail to promote research activities in the marine conservation domain before elucidating the potential solution.

Identification and Registration of All Fishing Vessels with a Unique Number

Global oceans and seas provide a vast space for all the parties interested in the fishing practices to participate. Starting from the sixteenth century, governments around the world utilized technologies to develop powerful water bodies for fishing and sea voyages as a show of power. The competitive era allowed the powerful nations with mighty vessels to conduct fishing activities almost all over the world, as long as their ships would bear. The time saw the like of Portuguese and Japanese reap big due to the freedom exhibited in the deep water. Nonetheless, the realization that competition led to an unhealthy marine ecosystem made the world initiate a system of controlling fishing activities by developing a unique number for each vessel operating in the seas (Nielsen et al., 2018). The unique numbers help in tracking the activities of each fishing vessel to notice its operations and potential adverse effects it causes to the highly valuable but draining marine resources.

Domestic Solutions

America’s Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the leading national agency on matters of marine ecosystem management and protection. The organization undertakes research on the best practice possible to promote sustainability in the water economy. The Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. are crucial players in the UN’s FAO, which investigates global trends in food supply for humans. The Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration already operate a system that identifies all the U.S. fishing vessels uniquely (Nielsen et al., 2018). The agency informs the establishment of America-based regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) that ensure that water bodies involved in fishing have a unique operations number. The process involves issuing the specific water vessels involved in fishing activities within the U.S. water with a definite registration number. The numbers provide a unique ability for the agency to track and audit each vessel’s operations, as well as involvement illegal fishing endeavors for management actions.

Case study: The International Maritime Organization (IMO) Number

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN plays a major role in regulating and conserving global marine settings around the world. FAO’s Committee of Fisheries (COFI) is one of the principal forces ensuring the protection of global fisheries through the application of effective laws and procedures. COFI is, for instance, the body behind the establishment of the unique numbering system for all the vessels, mainly the large ones, involved in fishing activities around the globe. The documentation requirement by COFI leads to the creation of the international maritime organization (IMO) number that recognizes each of the fishing vessels operating in the global waters uniquely. The IMO number remains permanent to the specific vessel even when such (the vessel) is out of operation. Establishing the IMO number makes it easy for COFI and other fishing regulatory agencies around the world to track and report the activities of individual vessels to notice any violations of the set fishing laws.

The IMO number is a regulatory measure that mainly focuses on the control of fishing vessels but does nothing to promote research in the marine conservation domain. As such, what the regulation does best is to make research in the global oceanic ecosystem harder. That is because the method makes the operation of vessels meant for research substantially hard. Acquiring the IMO number often involves several processes and money. Such elements are often not available for many young researchers around the world. The measure’s net effects on the research facet in the field are, therefore, negative. Therefore, there exists the need to adopt considerate registration requirements that consider researching institutions as special entities worth favorable considerations to advance the acquisition of new knowledge in the area to inform best practices.

Marine Protected Areas Creation

Marine protect areas are zones with controlled or zero fishing activities. About two percent of the globe’s oceanic waters are protected, while only one percent of the total global oceans exhibit zero fishing activities (Venturini, Campodonico, Cappanera, Fanciulli, & Vietti, 2017). The ‘no-catch’ zones establish appropriate sites for fish and other water ecosystem elements to develop naturally and undisturbed. Such zones also provide effective replenishment sites for endangered water organisms like white sharks and tuna. Organisms protected under the settings are further meant to multiply rapidly to realize sustainable population sizes. The ‘no-catch’ zones also provide excellent critical habitat for the many under threat water organisms.

The guidelines governing some of the established marine protected zones often challenge even the conductance of research activities on the facilities. The condition makes it hard for the established marine conservation facilities to promote maximum benefits (Venturini et al., 2017). The point that many such protected zones never operate under best practices largely explains the failure to provide the anticipated returns. As such, the worldwide marine conservation agency purposes to have the protected marine zones grow up to about twenty percent by 2020 (Merder et al., 2020). Realizing such a milestone under the current status, however, threatens to expose the world to numerous marine conservation mistakes due to the absence of science-backed best practices on the matter.

Domestic Solutions

America operates several marine protected areas as a way of conserving the marine ecosystem and allowing natural replenishment of water organisms. Cabrillo State Marine Reserve (SMR) is an example of a marine protected area in the country, the U.S. (Venturini et al., 2017). The Cabrillo SMR spreads off Cabrillo National Monument (in Point Loma), San Diego County, on California’s south coast. The SMR shelters about thirty-eight square miles and is home to thousands of endangered marine species. Moreover, the Cabrillo SMR guards marine life by restraining the exclusion of marine wildlife from within its boundaries (Venturini et al., 2017). The limitations cover even principal elements like the acquisition of marine life for research purposes. The aspect, therefore, makes the comprehension of the underlying aspects unknown to the global scholars and operators of the same facilities. The utilization of best practices in the area of protected marine zones is also significantly hard due to the absence of research-based knowledge. As such, the operation of such facilities, together with the anticipated growth in their numbers, hardly promises to make knowledge about their effectiveness in marine life conservation more available.

Case Study: Australian Marine Parks

The Australian marine parks, also known as the Commonwealth marine reserves, are marine protected zones in the Australian waters. The habitat is managed by the Australian government and occupies about two hundred nautical miles (Merder et al., 2020). However, the Australian administration purposes to expand the parks to 1,200,000 square miles by 2020. The move is highly challenged by the nation’s marine scholars and fishers as being overly restrictive (Merder et al., 2020). The Australian marine parks further take care of a wide array of marine creatures, including fish, coral, and coral reefs. The setting, thus, creates a highly appropriate platform for marine-related studies that can transform the conservation plan (Merder et al., 2020). Nonetheless, the Australian government places highly restrictive laws and policies for anyone proposing to undertake in-depth studies on the protected marine ecosystem. Consequently, the marine parks operate with reduced knowledge and information (Merder et al., 2020). Establishing policies that create room for comprehensive marine studies is, therefore, necessary for Australia and the world to learn best practices on matters of marine life conservation.

Case study: Agulhas Front Marine Protected Area

The Agulhas Front Marine Protected Area is located in South Africa’s offshores and protects millions of marine life species. The habitat covers four deep-sea regions of the Southwest Indian Ocean. The Agulhas protected area in South Africa is home to the largest population of critically endangered leatherback turtles and several other fish species exhibiting the same threat. Fishing is never allowed in the area, while very minimal research activities occur there (Rosemary et al., 2018). The fear that allowing fishing and intensive research operations in the South African-based marine protected zone will expose the endangered species to exploitation is the cause of the highly restrictive measures applied on the facility. Consequently, very little research-supported knowledge comes from this crucial bionetwork (Rosemary et al., 2018). As such, South Africa and the entire world stand to benefit highly from the adoption of policies that give room for controlled in-depth research on marine conservation practices based on this superb conservatory zone.

Worldwide Catch Shares

Catch shares is a scheme of fishing supervision that permits fish stocks to stock up while protecting the means of support of the fishing societies. Catch shares work by averting the unexpected failure of fish reserves and fishing activities (Nielsen et al., 2018). The method uses factors like the total ‘allowable catch’ to determine the optimum number of beneficial marine organisms that can be drawn from the water within a given duration, as opposed to season-based fishing. The catch shares, thus, purpose to ensure that humans’ life proceeds effectively without hurting the natural balance. The approach depends on the acquisition of scientific data to establish a workable record of fish stocks’ health and the impact of the surroundings in a definite area (Nielsen et al., 2018). Moreover, catch shares provide licenses to various fishing businesses showing them the exact amount of each seafood type permissible to catch (Nielsen et al., 2018). The catch shares paradigm is one of the best-voted ways of promoting marine conservation due to the ability to establish knowledge-based balance in life.

Catch shares further promote the control of seafood’s availability, thus, ensuring that profits remain high while governments and individual fishers reap maximum benefits from marine life. Divergent to regulating the time of a fishing season, catch shares promote communication and stewardship among fishers. The point that one is allowed to catch a given size of fish prevents fishers from the mad rush to make a living in a short period using all nature of fishing tactics, including trawling. As such, the catch shares tactic as it is currently is not adequate in promoting real sustainability in the marine ecosystem. That is because the method still remains mum on the issue of promoting research in the marine conservation practice.

Case study: Louisiana’s New Red Snapper Catch-Share Program

Louisiana’s New Red Snapper Catch-Share Program operates within the state of Louisiana. The program was initiated in 2017 and gives one hundred and fifty anglers the permission to catch twenty-five thousand pounds of red snapper anytime they wish. The method purposes to ensure a balance between the red snapper population in the Louisiana region and the community requiring such species for a protein source. The program reports a reduction in by-catch cases, a rise in revenue of about fifty percent, and a reduction in fishing-related chaos by about ninety percent (LeBreton & Rouge, 2021). A major missing factor in the program, however, is the aspect of research promotion in marine life.

Exempted Fishing Permit Policy as the Answer

All the marine ecosystem conservation strategies discussed earlier have clear weaknesses. A striking problem among the three fishing regulatory measures concerns the lack of support to science-based research practices to advance the best maritime conservation practices. The creation of marine protected areas is good for protecting endangered water-life, but significantly prevents in-depth research activities. Worldwide catch shares also promote sustainability but fall short in promoting research activities due to the strict regulations involved. That is why the exempted fishing permit policy offers the most compelling answer to the challenge posed by the different currently existing marine conservation measures. The first proposal for such an intervention exists in the U.S. and is expected to come operational starting 2023 if the public participation opinion under collection supports the policy.

The proposal suggests the exemption of specific vessels, licensed captains, and authorized crew to conduct limited sport fishing in the waters of the U.S. elite economic region off the Florida east coast. The proposal seeks to allow the parties to collect restricted numbers of snapper-grouper, dolphin and wahoo, and coastal migratory pelagic species to quantify shark depredation impacts in the recreational fisheries. The application lays out a precise procedure on how the investigations will occur, particularly concerning sample collection and marine life management (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2021). Once it succeeds, the relieved fishing permit policy application promises to help marine research practices to become legal activities conductible around fishing policies. The proposal also serves to form the basis of several other similar moves that promise to make the marine conservation process even more sustainable.

Recommendation

Almost all the current marine conservation measures limit marine research due to the absence of specific clauses that support or exempt marine scholars from the strict regulations enacted by the various conservation methods. For example, the creation of marine protected areas is good for protecting endangered water-life but significantly prevents in-depth research activities in the protected water ecosystems. Better still, the worldwide catch shares succeed in promoting sustainability but fall short in promoting research activities due to the strict regulations involved. The present work, thus, endorses the adoption of the exempted fishing permit proposal and any other analogous policies that can help marine research to be conducted around fishing guidelines as a new conservation policy.

Conclusion

Everything in the world is dynamic, making yesterday’s solutions weak as time goes by. Such is what exists in the marine conservation platform today. Many conservation tactics that worked in the past or working, presently lack a very vital facet for future success. A majority of such measures lack appropriate provisions for research activities in the conservation endeavor. The issue makes the utilization of best practices hard, exposing the conservation sites to secondary issues that need constant research to be identified and resolved. The case of shark predation’s impact in fisheries and other conservation zones around the world, for example, indicates the essence of making research a part of the conservation endeavor. One of the best ways to attain this goal is by adopting new policies that link marine research to fishing policies, as shown by the present work.

References

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Introduction

Globally, the fishing industry, as a natural resource sector, forms an integral part of national economies by enhancing trade globalization, liberalization, and encouraging investment from transnational organizations (Hoogensen 42). Fish trading is one of the most acceptable trades with several nations working towards improving their fishing industries to cope in the international trade. Apart from trade, fisheries form one of the largest employment sectors globally especially to the costal communities. However, several prior studies have continuously demonstrated pitfalls within the fishing industry; for instance, the collapse of fisheries in various parts of the globe, with research attentively focusing on possible causes and solutions towards the menace (Roughgarden and Smith 5078). For the last few decades now, famous international fisheries including the Canadian fisheries have drastically collapsed with reasons behind such subsidence remaining widely unknown, thus resulting to widespread economic harm. Due to the above-mentioned problem, this essay seeks to explore the fishing industry of Atlantic Canada and the reasons of its recent collapse.

Synopsis of the Canadian Fishing Industry

The Canadian fishing industry is core to this study. Historically, along with the discoveries made from the new world, the Northwest Atlantic fisheries emerged. The Northwest Atlantic rose exponentially throughout the centuries proving quite significant to most of the North Atlantic regions, especially to the Canadian population, by forming the most reliable economic backbone to the Canadians as well as a potential source of seafood for the Europeans (Fuller et al. 4).

The fishery industry originally operated under the watch of anglers from Western Europe ports, but it later attracted numerous costal communities into settling around the coast. Cod species became the most precious seafood across Atlantic, which became important basis for economic expansion between Newfoundland coastal communities and Europe by expanding industrial and trade development. The fisheries played an “important role in the development of Canada’s economy being one of the first bulk staple products exported from Canadian shores” (Hoogensen 42). Several Europeans including Spanish, Portuguese, and French became the most popular fish vendors across the Atlantic.

Throughout the centuries, the Newfoundland, Labrador, and the Grand Banks continuously played a significant role by supporting enormous fishing activities across the Atlantic, and thus providing important codfish and groundfish stocks for fish traders. The rapid growth of the Atlantic fisheries pulled extraneous population of migratory anglers into the seashores leading to exponential fishing competition that led to overexploitation of the fisheries (Rutherford 11). Initially, during the late centuries, Canadians fished in shallow waters relatively closer to the seashores sailing using small crafts and traditional fishing techniques including small gill nets, small trawlers, and traps. With the increasing demand for the codfish and other precious edible fish, the Atlantic shores of Canada continued witnessing abnormal population growth with New England fish traders invading the Canadian coast and introducing dangerous fishing methods into Atlantic Canada (William 49). These fishery companies continued to exploit the sea and extend their fishing miles, and this trend went on unnoticed until the codfish became scarce.

Economic Importance of the Industry

Most probably, no industry could match the economic importance of the fishing industry of the Atlantic Canada for several centuries from 1470s to late 1900. After the surpassed growth of the Canadian coast, fish solely became the most important sea commodity for trade that supported the regional economic life of the residents within Atlantic Canada. According to Fuller et al., globalization and commercialization of fish trade now became eminent with fish industry becoming the reason behind migration and immigration activities across the Newfoundland of Atlantic Canada (3). Millions of traders flocked the Atlantic Canada thus providing employment opportunities to several Canadian coastal communities. “The number of fish processing plants, promoted by the Newfoundland government for employment and development purposes, had also increased in the early 1980s” (Fred 4). By providing employment opportunities, the Canadian fish industry became one the greatest dependable economic sectors employing millions of Canadians across the coast as well as the entire Atlantic Canada.

As the fishing industry and the fish market across the famous Newfoundland and Labrador expanded within the economical perspective, this situation called for government intervention to enhance elaborative infrastructure to enable trading activities. Copes asserts, “Conversely, the fortunes of the fishing industry are much influenced by the infrastructure, service base, and local market access that other economic activities characteristic of the region may provide” (293). The government involvement continued to increase throughout the centuries by building elaborate transportation network that enhanced distribution of codfish and other groundfish related products across Europe and beyond (William 41). Exporting fresh and frozen fish to North America and other parts of the globe played a significant economic role in Canada. This move in turn increased the number of traders in twofold making the fishery industry one of the most important economical sectors during that time with economical impacts of the discovery of the New World being eminent in the current Canada.

Collapse of the Industry

As the fishing industry boomed, the Atlantic Canada became the world’s renowned fishing industry with the most productive cod fishing area stretching across North Atlantic region in Labrador and the Eastern parts of Newfoundland. The growing fishing industry of Atlantic Canada became the hot point and this aspect overwhelmed the Canadian government, which continued to support private enterprise fishing activities across the Newfoundland (Hoogensen 46). In the nineteen centuries, the number of fish started to decrease with private fishing companies exceeding the fishing boundaries beyond 200 nautical miles, with the government ignoring the conservative plans and disregarding the 200-mile national jurisdiction on fishing practices. As the demand for codfish and groundfish augmented, private fishing companies continued to sail with distance-water fleets using enhanced fish harvesting technology, consequently subjecting the Canadian coast to unprecedented and intense fishing pressure (Copes 291). The government continued to support the expansion of private investors in the fishing industry across Atlantic Canada, especially in Newfoundland.

The ecological effects went unrealized until late nineteen centuries when pitfalls became eminent to the Canadian fisheries management. Fred asserts, “In 1992, the once abundant cod stocks of the coast of Newfoundland collapsed and thus suspension on their fishing followed” (1). The government realized the mistake and thus there was a need to avert the situation. In a bid to control the situation, the Canadian government imposed a ban forbidding fishing for Northern cod across the waters surrounding Newfoundland province. This move consequently led to the crumple of the big fishery industries within Canada and England following the bans initiated by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and New England Fishery Management from their England counterparts (Roughgarden and Smith 5078). There was no other way out and thus the fish companies had to down their tools to allow the recovery of cods across Atlantic Canada, with the government giving exceptions to fisheries for home consumption.

Possible Reasons

The collapse of the famous Atlantic Canada fisheries sent an international signal, which led to raging public debates concerning the issues pertinent to the collapse of the fishing industry. Initially, scientists and environmentalists had warned the government and the public against human practices that could possibly result to complications in the ecosystem (Lane 3). Due to this move, there has been a considerable debate concerning the possible reasons for the collapse of northern cod. As demonstrated in the history, most researchers agued that overfishing was the major cause of collapse of codfish stocks. However, overfishing is clearly the contributing factor, but scientists and researchers assume that it is not the only cause of subsidence. Several causes streaming from economical, political, social and environmental factors largely exacerbated the dramatic collapse of the northern cod stocks in Atlantic Canada. They included overfishing, mismanagement, and detrimental environmental conditions among others.

Overfishing

Overfishing refers to engaging in fishing practices that overexploit or over burden normal fishing, which threaten the future of fish population in the waters. Prior studies on the causes of collapse of Northern code of Atlantic Canada have revealed overfishing as the most contributing factor to the falling of the stocks. Lane affirms that overfishing is universally renowned as the single most significant cause for fish stock collapse across the coasts (4). Characterized by the mismanagement of the Fishing industry by the Canadian fishing authorities and the organized criticism by fishers to exempt laws governing overfishing practices, this element became the most probable cause of the collapse of codfish stocks across the Atlantic Canada. According to William (65), disregarding the 200-mile jurisdiction set by the Canadian government to curb overfishing led to overexploitation by the Canadian and England fishing companies as well as foreign poachers, which consequently led to the collapse of the Northern cod stocks.

In respect to overfishing, several fishing practices contributed to the collapsing of the Northern cod apart from ignoring and extending the national jurisdiction over marine. Specifically, technologically influential fishing methods appear as the most significant contributory factors in the overfishing aspect. According to Fred, the case of collapsing of Northern cod involved three distinct groups including bottom trawlers, Canadian draggers, and deep sea foreign vessels scrambling for the codfish, redfish, and American plaice within the Newfoundland locale (3). There also existed inshore fishers who had the least impact on the fisheries since they harvested fish in swallow waters with small vessels, but they also increased fishing pressure across the waters of Newfoundland. The Canadian draggers have been among the greatest contributors of the collapse of the Northern cod stock as fishers using draggers massively exploited the coast leading to overfishing (Newell and Ommer 271). Until the late imposing of the 200-nautical mile rule in 1977, Canadian draggers overfished.

The introduction of trawlers into the Canadian fisheries worsened the situation. Operating like the Canadian draggers, the trawlers caused even the greatest harm to the Northern cod stocks. Almost every fishery company acquired trawlers, which contributed much to the Northern cod collapse as they dragged their nets, thus sweeping everything along the sea bottoms. Rutherford notes, “Equipped with high powered, all season factory trawlers, and sonar equipment, annual cod catches tripled” (12). With the existing prominence of the bottom-trawling gears to quench the regional and global supply demand for codfish, trawlers became the most common fishing facility for fishery companies. Foreign fishing fleets played a significant role in the collapse of the Newfoundland cods. After the discovery of the Newfoundland, the region witnessed an increased populace from fishers who travelled from other countries and docked to venture in fish trade in Canada. Foreign deep-sea vessels from Spain, Portugal, and France exploited the coastline leading to overfishing practices.

Mismanagement

Throughout the centuries, the Canadian government played an important role in controlling activities across the Canadian coast. Pitfalls in the governance were eminent from the top political to regional perspective with the Fisheries ministry and other local authorities of the Canadian Federal government exclusively contributing to the collapse of the north Atlantic cod stocks (Parsons and William 21). Politically, the trouping in of foreigners to venture in fishing activities became polemical within the Canadian political panorama. Since the beginning of fishing activities around the Newfoundland, the political arena continued to accuse each other thus politicizing the Fishery industry intensely (Parsons and William 21). The Englanders, Americans, Frenchmen, Portuguese, and native Canadians now received political influence putting the waters and the fishing activities under abnormal pressure, with each of the parties contesting on the possible shares for the Fishing industry. This move initiated the beginning of management defaults around the North Atlantic Canada.

Political influence

The political chaos and influence came to a halt after several political interventions between Canada, and the US, and England and consequently the Canadian Federal Government took control of the management of the Atlantic fisheries. At this point, according to Parsons, the provincial government of the Canadian Federal Government established its powers constitutionally through several government acts (“Management of Marine Fisheries in Canada” 89). The Canadian Minister of Fisheries and Oceans was now in a position to exercise powers and authorities to manage fisheries under the Fisheries Act. The federal government had the authority “to regulate the conservation and preservation of fisheries resources including such matters as type of fishing gear, limits on the amount of catch, close seasons, and species and size of fish caught” (Parsons “Canadian Marine Fisheries Management” 398). Thereafter, any pitfalls on the mismanagement were the liability of the provincial administration of the Canadian Federal government. Several malpractices became clear to the public during this regime with fishers taking advantage of the underlying mismanagement conditions.

Controversial Licensing System

Licensing practices by the federal government portrayed the probable reasons of the collapse of the entire fishing industry of Atlantic Canada. Licenses were an assurance that all fishers and their respective companies strictly followed the maritime legislation enacted through the constitutional Act of 1868, which restricted all fishing activities without a valid license. Despite the licenses being ad hoc in curbing the fishing activities around Newfoundland, several pitfalls emerged within the management (Fred 7). According to a research conducted by (William 60), the fisheries’ management started to become reluctant in handling licensing activities effectively. Moreover, due to affluence, they allowed some trade tycoons to continue with their exploitive activities by acquiring common property and quasi-private fisheries licenses, which allowed anglers to harvest different species under the name of paying certain taxes for such activities. This aspect motivated several fishing companies to engage in private licensing deals with the licensing board, and thus encouraged overfishing in the process.

Mismanagement Of Acts And Laws

It is crucial to note that the Canadian Federal Government proposed, enacted, and amended several laws governing the fishing activities within the Newfoundland and the entire Atlantic Canada. However, just as it is now evident globally, the implementation of the proposed acts became a major confront. According to Drinkwater, in a bid to respond to the increasing overfishing and overexploiting of Canadian coast, the government imposed acts including quotas and Total Allowable Catch (TAC) to avert overall production increase and restrict geographical extensions in waters (1335). These regulations became common and the population became resilient to them. Instead of ensuring that the fishing activities are following the set rules and regulations, the federal government became reluctant and made efforts to adjust the acts to suit the production of fish. Fred (8) affirms that it now remained clear that the government intervention targeted the efficient production and marketing activities associated with the booming activities of the fishing industry.

In this context, the Total Allowable Catch Act set to control the amount of harvested fish per single catch continued to face challenges with the responsible authorities campaigning to increase the fish production limits to accommodate fishing activities. According to William, “most quotas established at these meetings were based on the yield-per-recruit curves and set each year as closely as possible to the level necessary to generate maximum yield-per-recruit from the curves” (65). Therefore, the act could not manage the extraneous activities, which led to overfishing across the Canadian coast. In spite of the quotas, including the Magnuson Fishery Conservation Act in 1973, by excluding vessels permitted to exceed 200 miles; the federal government could not still manage this law and thus lifted the ban ultimately. Fuller et al. (9) assert that Newfoundland cod fishers continued to put pressure across the Canadian coast following the lifted bans and the reluctant push on the implementation of the laws by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).

Environmental Factors

Politics, mismanagement, and overfishing are not the only causative factors towards the collapse of the Atlantic Canada fisheries. Other natural aspects including detrimental environmental variables contributed to the collapse of some parts of Northern Cod Fisheries. According to a research conducted by Rutherford (15), a report tabled by both independent scientists and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, indicating that the environment is the least contributing factor, remains controversial to date, with several researchers currently citing environmental factors as significant contributor to the collapse of the Atlantic Canadian fishing industry. For instance, Drinkwater (1329) argues that climatic changes remain the most significant contributor of the falling of the cod stocks, with temperature being the most influential variable that affects the breeding and population of the codfish. However, scientists and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans have continuously underestimated the adverse effects exacerbating the collapse of cod stocks across the Atlantic Canada, especially in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Temperature

Temperature conventionally means the coldness or hotness of a given region as scientifically established. The Atlantic Canada has been experiencing fluctuations in temperatures since time immemorial. As demonstrated by Drinkwater (1329), temperatures account for about 90 per cent of the observable disparity pertinent to the growth rates in codfish for warmer temperatures accelerate the growth rates and lower temperatures decelerated the growth rate of codfish. Apart from being influential on growth of codfish, temperature affects the reproductive behavior of the codfish with higher temperatures enhancing sprawling and reproduction. Temperatures further affected the migration distribution of codfish with a majority of scholars associating migration with a shift towards warmer zones. According to Rutherford, “the Department of Fisheries and Oceans placed blame on forces beyond their control including cold water temperature and predation by seals” (15). Typically, temperature remains a natural uncontrollable factor, which is the most influential factor on the presence of cod stocks within a given geographical zone.

With this insight in mind, the global climatic changes are still threatening the welfare of several human activities including agriculture and fishing. A Research and a report documented by DFO and private scientist associated the collapsing of the Atlantic cod stocks with the climatic fluctuations, and temperature changes stood out as the most influential climatic variable. According to Roughgarden and Smith (5080), the Atlantic Canada has consistently been experiencing lower annual water temperatures in recent years, thus hampering the inter-annual production of fish due to changes in migration, distribution, and affecting the reproduction and growth patterns of the codfish and other groundfish. Changes in climatic conditions with temperature fluctuating throughout the centuries, decades, and in recent years led to abundance of capelin, which is the common food depended by codfish (Newell and Ommer 260). In addition, seals at the same moment continued to predate on the codfish as their population surged due to decelerated fishing of the species.

Other Factors

Despite the fact that several studies have shed light on the possible reasons behind the collapse of the fish stocks across the Canadian coast, numerous other significant factors remain unnoticed. As highlighted by Roughgarden and Smith (5078), other possible factor, which may have contributed to the collapse of the Atlantic Canada fishing industry include overoptimistic assessment by the DFO and fisheries scientists, overcapitalization of fisheries, and subventions to fishers. However, latest renowned causes according to a report documented by the Task Force on Incomes and Adjustment on Atlantic fisheries in 1993 highlighted some significant contributors to the collapse of the Atlantic Canada. According to Williams (71), high Total Allowable Catch levels, underreporting of actual figures on catches, failure to control the expanding fishing industry, foreign fishers’ invasion, and unanticipated long-term ecological challenges in the nineteenth centuries underscore some of the other unmentioned factors behind the decline. Within the twentieth century, lack of close mass market for fish, political antagonism to modernization, inadequacy venture capital, and proper conservation of the business community are contributing factors.

Conclusion

The drastic crumple of the Atlantic Canada fishing industry is a solemn national and global concern. In spite of studies that have cited several factors, which supposedly contributed to the subsidence of the Northern Atlantic cod, and most depended sources of economic support that led to thousands of people losing their jobs; everyone is to blame. Williams states, “Fishers, processors, scientists, fisheries managers, and politicians all made mistakes” (71). Almost everyone involved in the fishing business knew quite well the consequences of overfishing, with those governing the fishing activities across Newfoundland and Labrador maliciously remaining reluctant to exercise their constitutional rights to avert overfishing (Newell and Dianne 355). If the blame rests on certain individuals, then the question remains, how can one blame the uncontrollable environmental variables including the fluctuating climatic conditions that only God can control? However, all human factors that led to the collapse of the great Atlantic Canada were controllable and thus people should take caution in future fishing actions.

Works Cited

Copes, Parzival. “Fisheries Analysis: A Marine Dimension for Regional Science.” Canadian Journal of Regional Science 14.2 (1991): 291-297. Print.

Drinkwater, Kenneth. “The response of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) to future climate change.” Journal of Marine Science 62.1 (2005): 1327-1337. Print.

Fred, Mason. “The Newfoundland Cod Stock Collapse: A Review and Analysis of Social Factors.” The Green Journal 1.17 (2002): 1-21. Print.

Fuller, Sussana, Candace Picco, Jennifer Ford, Chih-Fan Tsao, Lance Morgan, Dorthea Hangaard, and Ratana Chuenpagdee 2008, Addressing the Ecological Impacts of Canadian Fishing Gear. Web.

Hoogensen, Gunhild. “The Canadian Fisheries Industry: Retrospect and Prospect.” Canadian Political Science Review 1.1 (2007): 42-56. Print.

Lane, Daniel. “Property rights and governance in Canadian fisheries.” The Journal of Public Sector Management 29.1 (2000): 1-8. Print.

Newell, Diane, and Rosemary Ommer. Fishing Places, Fishing People: Traditions and Issues in Canadian Small-Scale Fisheries. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Print.

Parsons, Scott 2010, Canadian Marine Fisheries Management: A Case Study. Web.

Parsons, Scott. Management of Marine Fisheries in Canada. Canada: NRC Research Press, 1993. Print.

Parsons, Scott and Leah William. Perspectives on Canadian Marine Fisheries Management, Issue 226. Canada: NRC Research Press, 1993. Print.

Roughgarden, Jonathan, and Fraser Smith. “Why fisheries collapse and what to do about it.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93.2 (1996): 5078-5083. Print.

Rutherford, Jacquelyn. “Too many boats chasing too few fish: The collapse of the Atlantic groundfish fishery and the avoidance of future collapse through free market environmentalism” Studies by Undergraduate Researchers at Guelph 2.1 (2008) 11-17. Print.

William, Leah. “History of Fisheries in the Northwest Atlantic: The 500-Year Perspective.” Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Science 23.1 (1998) 41-73. Print.

Introduction

Alaska’s progress in the past and future is closely related to its limited and renewable resources. As the state has developed, it has become clear that careful planning is required to preserve and drive economic growth and protect essential resources for the state’s interests. Alaska’s unique recreational resources offer the state tangible and quantitative benefits (expenditures on food, housing, recreational equipment, and guiding) and substantial psychological benefits to outdoor-oriented Alaskans. Furthermore, many individuals of various socioeconomic levels rely on fishing resources to supplement their nutrition.

Due to the very seasonal nature of most fisheries and the lack of job reporting requirements, comparing employment in the seafood sector to other businesses is difficult. Commercial fishers are often excluded from most published employment data because, unlike other companies, they are not obliged to file quarterly reports with the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development to receive unemployment insurance benefits. Data on the number of fishing and processing workers are readily available by location and residence, making it simple to count them.

Despite its multifaceted relevance, little thought has been paid to assessing the function of recreational resources in Alaska. This is partially due to the difficulty of putting a monetary value on experiences like a day of river angling or the nutritional worth of a salmon, trout, or halibut. Recent advances in the field of recreation economics, on the other hand, have overcome some of these measuring issues. Unfortunately, these advancements have only been applied to valuing non-Alaska leisure, with little attention paid to activities equivalent to Alaska outdoor experiences. Certain traditional aspects investigated elsewhere, such as access and congestion concerns at locations near metropolitan centers and many replacement options across sites, are also present in the research region. As a result, it is feasible to research qualities that have never been studied before and analyze traits that are universal to recreational fishing, independent of location.

The Research Questions

This research aims to assess the economic worth of sport fishing in southcentral Alaska from 2018 to 2021. In southcentral Alaska, economic values are assessed for all sport fishing, all king salmon sport fishing, halibut sport fishing, and razor clam sport fishing. There are two primary research questions that will be pursued throughout the study. To what extent do sport angler expenditures by water body fished and species targeted, as well as the economic impact of overall angler spending on sport fishing, have an impact on the state of southcentral Alaska? What is the total number of nonmarket values (or consumer surplus) associated with sport fishing, broken down by water body fished and species sought? These are the perks that fishers receive in addition to the money they spend to participate in sport fishing.

A tentative thesis: Planning and management of fish, wildlife, and habitat resources have a significant influence in the state. However, little study has been done on patterns of usage, replacement possibilities, and direct and indirect benefits that these resources create. Thus, this research will fill in the gaps in knowledge by looking at the vast and essential concentration of sport fishing activity in southcentral Alaska.

Explanation of an Interest in the Topic

The fisheries in southcentral Alaska include several characteristics that are unique to Alaska and other characteristics that have been studied elsewhere. The richness and diversity of species sought and the potential for both sport and personal use fishing are some of the distinctive traits. It also covers the usage of resources by residents and non-residents and the involvement of the guiding and tourism industries. Finally, there are unique recreational possibilities (for example, the Kenai River king salmon runs of big trophy-sized fish) used by many keen outdoors enthusiasts who fish as a hobby.

This region has some of the world’s most significant and most valuable salmon fisheries. Bristol Bay, which has the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery, appears to the Copper River, where sockeye and Chinook salmon command some of the highest per-pound rates given to commercial fishers. Commercial fisheries in Cook Inlet are located near Alaska’s major population center, delivering salmon to a variety of specialty and local markets and fresh salmon to markets in neighboring states. Thus, fishing is a significant area of activity in Alaska. Therefore, the interest lies in understanding what impact it has on the life and economy of the state.

Research Methods

Quantitative research methods focus on objective measurements and statistical, mathematical, or numerical analysis of data acquired through polls, questionnaires, and surveys, as well as modifying pre-existing statistical data using computing tools. Quantitative research is concerned with collecting numerical data and generalizing it across groups of individuals or explaining phenomena. The final written report includes the introduction, literature and theory, methodology, results, and comments. Descriptive research is a type of quantitative study that aims to collect measurable data in order to do statistical analysis on a population sample. It is a common market research method for gathering and describing the characteristics of demographic segments.

None of the variables in descriptive research are impacted in any manner. The research is carried out using observational approaches. As a result, the researcher has no control over the variables’ nature or behavior. A descriptive research approach can be applied in various ways and for a variety of purposes. However, it is critical to understand the survey goals and design before beginning any survey. Close-ended questionnaires are used to make specific inferences about the responses. This might be because of determining the respondents’ patterns, characteristics, and habits. It might also ascertain a respondent’s attitude or viewpoint on the issue.

Researchers frequently utilize descriptive research to determine the research object’s current circumstances and underlying trends. Researchers watch each variable and perform an in-depth study thanks to the non-invasive research approach, quantitative observation, and certain features of qualitative observation. Researchers also use it to confirm any existing disorders that may be widespread in a group. To see whether there are any parallels or differences, the analysis might be done at different times. This also enables the evaluation of any number of variables. Studies on current situations can also be repeated to identify trends for verification.

A Project Schedule

It is worth mentioning that the study will be done in two parts. The first phase will be primarily concerned with data collecting, including survey design, testing, and implementation. To collect the data needed for the economic analysis, intensive surveys of local and non-resident anglers and sport fishing-related companies and guides will be undertaken through the survey. The second phase will focus on data analysis, including processing survey data and secondary data, devising analytical procedures and conducting analyses, and preparing reports.

Works Cited

Baumer, Jay. Area Management Report for the Sport Fisheries of the North Gulf Coast, 2016–2018. Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 2019.

Beaudreau, Anne H., et al. “Harvest Portfolio Diversification and Emergent Conservation Challenges in an Alaskan Recreational Fishery.” Biological Conservation, vol. 222, 2018, pp. 268–77.

Chan, Maggie N., et al. “Evaluating the Recreational Fishery Management Toolbox: Charter Captains’ Perceptions of Harvest Controls, Limited Access, and Quota Leasing in the Guided Halibut Fishing Sector in Alaska.” Marine Policy, vol. 91, 2018, pp. 129–35.

Harris, Bradley. “Ichthyophonus in Sport-Caught Groundfishes From Southcentral Alaska.” Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, vol. 128, no. 2, 2018, pp. 169–73.

Jones, Leslie A., et al. “Watershed‐scale Climate Influences Productivity of Chinook Salmon Populations Across Southcentral Alaska.” Global Change Biology, vol. 26, no. 9, 2020, pp. 4919–36.

Lavoie, Anna, and Amber Himes-Cornell. “Social Networks of Alaska Fishing Communities.” Coastal Management, vol. 47, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1–22.

Lavoie, Anna, et al. “Ground-Truthing Social Vulnerability Indices of Alaska Fishing Communities.” Coastal Management, vol. 46, no. 5, 2018, pp. 359–87.

Lew, Daniel Kevin. Costs, Earnings, and Employment in the Alaska Saltwater Sport Fishing Charter Sector, 2017. Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 2019.

Pickett, Jennifer, and Joeri Hofmans. “Stressors, Coping Mechanisms, and Uplifts of Commercial Fishing in Alaska: A Qualitative Approach to Factors Affecting Human Performance in Extreme Environments.” Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1–16.

Szymkowiak, Marysia. “Genderizing Fisheries: Assessing Over Thirty Years of Women’s Participation in Alaska Fisheries.” Marine Policy, vol. 115, 2020, p. 103846.

Executive Summary

The purpose of this dissertation is to assess the impact of fishing quota regulation on the fishing industry of South Africa and this study focus on the Irvin & Johnson case to observe the current position of fisheries.

The first chapter concentrates on the historical background of fishing quota regulation, importance of quota system, rationale for this study, point out research aim and objectives, raise research questions, find out the scopes, and limitations of the study.

The second chapter describes the theoretical framework on fishing quota regulation and quota management supported by the most recent authors and remarkable researchers recognised by the academia and economic development agencies.

Therefore, this part describes the quota management and business competitiveness, significance of quota for market sustainability, strategic cost management, Porter’s theory of strategic cost analysis, fishing quota regulation’s impact on the profitability, common fishing quota regulation and current amendment and global fishing quota management.

The methodology of this study makes it clear how this dissertation would design with qualitative and quantitative research approach to discuss the influence of fishing quota regulation on the fisheries like- Irvin & Johnson (I&J).

On the other hand, findings and discussion chapters focus on the basic influence of fishing quota regulation upon the operation and strategies of fishing companies, particularly on the I&J, and last chapter considers key issues of previous chapters to draw conclusion and to provide of key recommendations.

Problem Statement

Introduction

This dissertation would analyse the fishing quota regulation of South Africa with the aim to explain and investigate how the quota regulation has influenced and affected the fishing industry with a case study of Irvin & Johnson (I&J), the market leader South African fishing industry based on their current market position.

This paper would be organised and chronologically explored with six major chapters and these have demonstrated as below-

Problem Statement

The first chapter ‘Problem Statement’ is the introductory part of this dissertation, which provides the overview of entire paper with the background of the research, research gap, and rational of the research. In addition, this part of the dissertation will raise research questions, enlightens the scopes and drawbacks of the research and research objectives.

Literature Review

The second chapter has deliberated with the appropriate theoretical arguments on fishing quota regulation supported by the most recent authors and remarkable researchers recognised by the academia and economic development agencies.

This literature review would argue to answer the research questions from the perspective of theoretical framework first then it would also fit the literature on the operators and strategies of Irvin & Johnson (I&J) with the aim to assess the influence of fishing quota regulation.

This chapter would start on coherence with the introduction to fishing quota regulation, its impact on the market, competitive analysis, fishing management politics, its institutionalisation, and challenges of fisheries management including the opportunities of empowering social capital, distribution channel, consumer behaviour, and quota impact on customers as well.

Methodology

The third episode of this dissertation makes it available that the justification on how the current research on the influence of fishing quota regulation on the fishing companies such as Irvin & Johnson (I&J) would take place and the paper would argue for both qualitative and quantitative research.

Malhotra (123) demonstrated that the difference between quantitative and qualitative research is to collect and analysis the data in different way, for example, quantitative research methods may be direct focus group interviews and their numerical data while qualitative method has formed that is more subjective and depends on secondary sources.

Therefore, this dissertation would explore to the data collection processes such as direct interviews of the management and managers of Irvin & Johnson (I&J) as significance the primary and secondary sources. Besides the data collection, this chapter also enlighten on the limitation on data collection, reliability, and validity of the interviews would be illustrated.

Key Findings and Results

It is important among other chapters as this part based on the practical data and evaluation to bring the suitable solutions for measuring the effectiveness and influence of fishing quota regulation on the fishing companies of South Africa.

The tools of statistical analysis such as Microsoft Excel would briefly explain by using the several models on the collected data to measure the market risk factors, opportunities, external and internal factors, as well as environmental influences. As the researcher has aimed to interview with management and managers of Irvin & Johnson (I&J), the finding and result would be concentrated on I&J and then as while to the fishing industry.

Discussion

This chapter would discuss on the basic influence of fishing quota regulation upon the operation and strategies of fishing companies, which influence to industry trend for both small and large companies as well as stakeholders with relevant data.

This chapter would also compare the impact of fishing quota regulation of South Africa with other countries such as European and US market to demonstrate the effectiveness of fishing quota regulation of South Africa.

Recommendation and Conclusions: Finally, the chapter six of this dissertation would scrutinize all the discussion of previous chapter to draw significant conclusion and to point of key recommendations for fishing quota regulation of South Africa.

Background of the problem

Gordon first identified the fishery as a common resource of the planet, analysed the political economy of fishing, and pointed out that the free access to this resource would go ahead with overload fishing efforts, rakishness on the rents as well as unproductive reduction of fish resource (99).

Newell, James, and Suzi argued that such forecasting evidenced truth while two decades of speedy extension of fishing in England had spoiled the ground fish resources; consequently, bunged up since 1994 such evidence urged on the necessity of control and administering the fishing industry (3).

FAO (5) mentioned that 75% of the global fisheries stock has completely been consumed while the excessive fishing turned the ocean into almost fishless and the circumstances looked very crucial due to the number of highly migratory fishing resources across the deep sea those are deistically caught without any control or management.

The destruction of fish stocks at the increasing has signalled tremendous danger sign to the fish for future generation even though the deep sea fishing resources stand for just a very little portion of the global fishery where millions of populace are significantly striving for their occupation (49).

Under Article 36 of the UN Fish Stock Agreement, the member countries of the United Nations have come into a common platform with joint effort to introduce legislation with the aim to manage and administer the fishing resources. This global engagement also aimed to conservation and management of the fisheries resource as well as ocean ecosystem and this concord among the countries has given birth of Fishing Quota.

Newell, James, and Suzi pointed out that the historical evidence demonstrates until eighties fishing was an independent effort without any control and fishermen don’t any values or sense of ownership or future prospect and this valued resource utilisation was deeply concerned with size of ocean going vessels, category of using nets, length of season.

Such liberty has driven the fishing efforts to an unparallel competition of catching fish without any consideration.

Hersoug argued that implication of different quotas such as IVQ¹ and ITQ² or other licence regimes have demonstrated to achieving a very few of the objectives of conservation the fishery resources and the problem area even exist in some part of the globe while the rights-based fisheries management carried out both expected and unusual responds (7).

Hasan and John also presented the fishing resource allocation with a linier modelling (21).

Martin and Jesper mentioned that as an integral part of global fishing industry South Africa Fishing industry also going through different problem and prospect while the quota regulation has evidenced 75% of the industry share possesses by only two companies (4).

This type of centralisation of resources does not uphold the values of democracy and social justice and thus, the question rises what the contribution quota system kept in the South African fishing heritage!

The deep-seated struggle among the stakeholders of fishing industry of South Africa that has been rooted in the vigour of society and an unavoidable part of the African Political dynamics where the ANC³ ascended to the state power of South Africa in 1994 with their manifesto of urging reformation and development of the country with their RDP⁴ Programme.

The government of South Africa faces great challenge to reforming the fisheries sector though it was their commitment to the nation, people ask for easy access rights for the black fisherman, campaign for reasonable quota distribution system among the real fisherman including the black though the existing system has been criminalized and centralised by the whites.

The present government is deeply concerned to address the peoples’ acceptation with proper policy reformation in the Fishery sector, thus, it would be a time-honoured imitative to examine what impact has fishing quota regulation kept in the Fishing Industry of South Africa.

Rationale for the research

Many scholars tried to find out the solution of the question how fishing quota regulation has been maintaining in the Fishing Industry of South Africa; some of the researches have aimed to investigate how the fishing industry going to centralise within a few companies.

A very few of most recent research addressed how people are losing their trust to the existing fishing quota system as well as how the South African fishing industry would gain stability and stakeholders confidence from last era.

Most of the contemporary researchers have concentrated on the fishing quota regulation, distribution and regulatory reform in the fishing quota regulation, but no overarching research agenda has yet been proposed on whether the fishing quota regulation has direct impact on the South African Fining industry or not.

Béné (7) analysed the fishing industry as a prospective sector for African Economy has been flourishing the market in the same traditional manner without any changes in their market share or distribution quota has no major impact in the economy or real resource allocation.

Such researches concentrated on the background of quota introduction and spotlight with special attention on how two opposite, but essential dialogues regarding the responsibility of fishing companies in the national development as well as food security in South Africa (4-17).

Normann (11) focused that South African Fishing industry, identified the dilemmas of definition making while he identified a strapping conflict among the stakeholders and resource management, and supported for a co-management based democratic practice where the all representatives of stakeholders in the industry would be involved at decision-making process.

With the aim to consecrating, the fishery resources, which are concerned with to putting a stop to the over-fishing, but the reality demonstrated negative prospect on the resource (8).

Britz et al (21) argued that the Marine Living Resources Act -1998 of South Africa has been grounded on the platform of equity, justice, sustainability, and steadiness while the act has worked as a tool to administer and control over the fishery stakeholders including the angler, but due to different organisational goal and conflicting strategies.

Above all the African people have the dream of equity based resource allocation in the fishery sector, while the government also soft to this demand due to their election commitment, but the organisations as if I&J already owned 75% of the national resources (6).

The rationale of this research is to analyze the impact of fishing quota regulation experienced by observing the real scenario of Irvin & Johnson (I&J) to evaluate to what extent fishing quota regulation is effective to retain stakeholders interest and increasing awareness to administer and conservation of fishery resources.

In addition, the ownership and resource allocation through quota system has escalated the awareness of regulators to take control over the South African fishing resources and bring back the people’s confidence; this dissertation will assist the academia, regulators, and stakeholders with better understanding about the fishery management including its driving force such as social ownership and its rational allocation.

Through this investigation, the large companies will get a potential investment environment to increase fishing stock and the small fishing companies will get a better level of confidence, which will provide the companies a practical advantage over their fishing efforts.

Research Aim and Objectives

The main objective of this study is to examining the performance of fishing quota regulation of South African government that is functioning in the existing fishing management and its impact on the fishing companies both small and large companies while the Irvin & Johnson (I&J) is a case study approach.

This dissertation also aimed to understanding the different type of influence of quota among the stakeholders and how the increasing awareness with the fishing quota becoming pressure to the government for restructuring the quota system.

Throughout this investigation, this paper would keep keen eyes on how the fishing companies would respond and measure the impact from legislation implementation and to what extent the government intervention is keeping positive or negative impact on the fishery resource and its proper allocation and management.

As the governmental policy reformation efforts already taken into account to restructure the quota allocation, it is essential to address what social impact is the driving force for such reformation, to what extent the new legislation would allow government intervention, and how it directly influences on the profit generation of the fishing companies including the limitations the governmental efforts.

This dissertation has aimed to explore the effectiveness fishing quota regulation of South African by considering strategic tools and parameters and assess how the regulating authority would manage their fishing resources more efficiently than ever before.

To do so, this dissertation also deals with few imperative questions for instance what would the fishing company’s strategic change in the markets, what distribution channels are the companies planning to exploit as well as how does this contrast with the competitor as well as public relations, and promotion plans.

Research Questions

This dissertation has intended to response the following research questions to support the topic area with proper evidence. The main objective of this research is to analyse what are the impact of fishing quota regulation of South African and how the fishing quota influence the development and growth of companies like Irvin & Johnson (I&J) and to do so this paper would raise four research questions and these are –

• To what extent the conceptual framework of quota links with business competitiveness and sustainability
• How business competitiveness and sustainability depends on strategic cost management in business environment
• To what extent fishing quota regulation can influence on the profitability of a business under such business environment
• To what extent I & J drives itself to gaining business competitiveness and sustainability under existing quota system and how it responds to any new quota allocation

The raised research questions are important to examine the effectiveness fishing quota regulation, and these questions would ultimately assist to draw the conclusion of the dissertation.

Limitations of the study

The author of this dissertation had faced number of problems to research on this area, such as –

• Some instructions concerned with this project were too complex to communicate, for example, fishing quota regulation in South Africa and how this regulation affected the fishing industry was required to discuss in light of legal aspect, but it was difficult for the researcher to deal with legal issues from the legislators views, but due to lack of time and other constrains legal personalities are not interviewed;
• One of the main problems was the low response rate as respondents were either busy with their own occupation or they were reluctant give discuss on this issue due to lack of knowledge in this particular area;
• Most of the time, the management of the large companies are not intend to reveal the actual position of the impact of regulation, so employees also show same attitude;
• On the other hand, the author got very short period to plan or conduct research and completed the paper;
• To gather data from respondents, the researcher has suffered numerous problems, as the employees of I&J were too busy, many respondents completed his survey form after finishing the entire project;
• In addition, budget was another significant subject for the researcher to gather both secondary data as well as primary data from interviewees.
• There are too many secondary resources were available in the internet, books or journals, but most of the sources were full of irrelevant data and it was another problem of the researcher to formulate the paper in proper way;
• Recently, there were several journal articles upon how fishing quota regulation affected fishing industry in South Africa, which apparently seem important to researcher by reading the abstract, but the price of the entire paper was too high to purchase as the researcher was not confirmed that whether those would be applicable or not.

Scopes of the study

The author of this study has unlimited scopes besides the limitations to conduct research, for instance–

• The researcher has opportunity to examine both negative and positive side of the fishing quota regulation in South Africa;
• In addition, this paper would point out how fishing quota regulation directly affected the small companies in this industry;
• The researcher of this dissertation has scope to conduct a real research on Irvin & Johnson (I&J) to assess the impact of fishing quota regulation in South African Fishing Industry;
• The author has scope to focus on both qualitative and quantitative research approach in order to design this paper though the number of words was sufficient to cover most of the issues to get proper outcomes from this research;
• The entire study will help to provide fruitful, realistic and applicable suggestions and recommendations to develop the fishing industry of South Africa;
• This dissertation has also scope to provide the conceptual framework of quota; strategic cost management in business environment, fishing quota regulation can affect the profitability, and so on.

Summary

Introduction provides the background of the study including research aims and objectives, research questions, the scope and limitation of the study and rational of the research to observe the fishing quota regulation of South African in context of Irvin & Johnson (I&J) and the continual outcomes.

Relevant Literature Review

This literature review of assessing the impact has fishing quota regulation on the Fishing Industry of South Africa has been aimed to respond to the evaluation of the literatures those provide logical appraisal to the raised research questions.

At the same time, this literature review would keep its effort to analyse the evidence of I&J, that fits with the answers to the research questions generated from the perspective of theoretical framework connecting the endeavour to assess the influence of fishing quota regulation.

Theoretical framework of Quota Management

In the viewpoint of business constituency, the term “quota” has referred to the proportion restricted for the industries those have struggled for shortage management of resources in order to boost their production and sales volume. According to the MAS⁵ quota of a specific business or industry has to be attributed through industry profile, ideal region to business operations and human resource quantity in this division.

Considering these three major issues government and non-government organisations can easily enlisted under business quota of the government and hence able to consume required resources to boost their production as well as sales in both domestic and international markets.

Additionally, industries under quota have kept their profit margin by utilisation of the strategic cost management module. (Berzofsky et al. 4)

The most practiced quota system would find in the agricultural, mining, fishing, real state industries those are directly inked with the utilisation of natural resources though in the modern world in some counties, quota system has implemented in export, import, retail and wholesale.

Dynamics of Quota Management

Siebel Systems (3) identified the following are the key dynamics of quota management –

• There should be a clear vision of industry outline where performance appraisal of business industry have to be evaluated during pre-determine time-frame⁶
• It has strategically illustrated that the quota definition where each and every segment of the industry has plotted proportionally or prorated production and sales volume,
• Quota dynamics also illustrate a performance appraisal account where prediction, expectation, as well as profit margin at the end of the business period should be compared.

Pearce (20) added that the quota dynamics are concerned with business sustainability where the significance is that the successful businesses are increasingly faced to the competitive markets necessarily have access towards exclusive, unbreakable capabilities, strong competences, along with quasi-assets with the aim to gain top position in the race.

It has also argued that this is not just an effort to simply gaining access towards the mentioned assets to gaining the competitive advantage, while the practice would actuality gain such attributes from the greater orchestration of those resources as well as designing capabilities.

Consequently, the struggling company would repeatedly keep its effort to creating and marinating or enter by force to the practice on monopolies, more or less pedestal on intangibles. The Dynamics of business sustainability concerned with the dynamics of quota management has presented in the following figure-

Figure 1: – Dynamics of business sustainability

Source: – Pearce (20)

Quota Management and Business Competitiveness:

Sustainability under competitive market, business quota has directed an industry towards maturity by striving under a controlled system and closed resources.

Policy makers of the business quota have taken into their account that whether new professional skills as well as team management of organisation’s entire department would be required to amend. Three major departments⁷ of an organisation have mentored through following nine chief steps/stairs for the progress of professional skills. (Alexander 1–4)

Firstly, make a clear vision of obligatory specialized skills as well as guideline for the sales department’s success within a certain period. As stated by following list lower than 35 score has treated as crisis of necessity to be qualified.

Second, it is the level to be aware of consumer’s emotion and it has to be quoted that sales volume has not fluctuated only by company policies⁸ but also consumer’s connectivity⁹ in conjunction of organisation’s staff.

In short, integrated contribution of entire team management has been including necessary training in order to assist an organisation to get better competitive performance during the quota/shortage management. During band score of performance appraisal level 5 and 6 has considered ideal continuum.

Figure 2: – Qualifying checklist of professional skills for Quota

Source: – Alexander (2)

The third attribute to qualifying quota is assembling the six major aspects¹⁰ of business development has provided technical support to enjoy business competitiveness during quota management. More specifically, operation stages have more effectively influence sales atmosphere.

The fourth attribute to qualifying quota is emphasise on consumers segmentation of the professional services, where quota market demand, market potentiality as well as pricing strategies have to be analysed. During consumer segmentation, business competitiveness has to be concern on actual demand of a customer either quality or innovation and partnership.

Fifth, to reach organisational vision, mission, goals, and objectives, the organisation has to be dynamic on proper nursing of the team management including superior features¹¹ of skill development. Sixth, it is the level to paying attention on middle level executives who task where six Cs¹² of marketing have to be highlighted to reflect business efficiencies as well as higher level of decision-making procedures.

During the next phase of quota management as well as business competitiveness have required selecting target market for preparing sales team proficiency as well as connectivity among each other for better decision making.

Figure 3: – Sales influencer’s map

Source: – Alexander (3)

Another attribute to qualifying quota is connectivity among sales volume and performance evaluation and here supportive atmosphere¹³ of the sales division can help proportionately to boost sales volume of the firm. Finally, get enter into the target competitive market and execute professional training skills to enjoy market competitiveness.

Significance of Quota for Market Sustainability

Quota management has following emergencies to construct durable business substantiality. Several affluent business industries have struggled long for survival and the business quota management has the proper efficiency to recover business survival challenges.

In short, quota management can be termed as a roadmap of long-term market sustainability. In the light of sustainability, emergence of business quota has following contribution. (Deloitte 5, 6)

Figure 4: – Challenging areas of market sustainability

Source: – Deloitte (14)

Consumer generation: consumers are the heart of a business and its market and the quota management have the expertises to design consumer segment and boosts consumer volume. In other word, business priorities have created through formulation of sustainable strategies as requirement of quota market entry as well as consumer priorities.

Accountability and transparency of the stakeholders: it has rather difficult for the business holders to keep transparency and accountability during international business operation and in many cases in domestic market as well. Quota management has the proactive managerial guidelines to resolve these ethical dilemmas.

Strategic cost management: cost management efficiency has required to business operation reengineering and sustainability of the current PLCs along with risk minimizing in the course of resonance ROI¹⁴.

On the other hand, fluctuations of raw material prices, balance between global demand and supply have made the foundation of organisation’s supply chain management. Here, quota management has directed the cost savings approaches as well as defence against the threats of upcoming cost burden.

Government aid through designing compliance regulations: it has a great challenge for the companies to monitor individual employee’s responsibilities, fair financial statements, as well as employee health and safety guarantee during workplace. Quota management has made obligatory regulations on audit reporting, inspection of compliance qualities and evaluation of gap among regulatory requirements and operations.

Figure 5: – Emergence of quota for sustainability

Source: – Deloitte (15)

Connectivity of Quota with Competitiveness & Sustainability

Correlation among quota, competitiveness, and long run sustainability has encircled though following six major aspects. In this part of the paper, current scenario of the South African fishery industry has illustrated in consistent with the Porters’ five forces model and explained as below –

Attributes of the operational dynamics: The effective dynamics have included with the key forces of production, structure of labour wages, competitive production costs, and market availability of competitive infrastructures, those are currently occupied in the quota markets of South Africa.

Demand conditions: demand conditions have required considering both domestic and global agro product and service demand. Additionally, fluctuation of demand scale has also recorded for future decision making supporting tool.

Figure 6: – Performance appraisal through supply chain management

Source: – Gaiardelli, Nicola and Lucrezia (4)

Supply chain management: commonly, supply chain management is trade-off among buyers and suppliers. Agro-business industry of the South Africa has passed a complex market power between these two parties. In recent years, managers of this industry have rather alert to resolve the threats of value chain activities globally.

Hypothetically, the supply chain management has needed to deal with four basic level of a business organisation like development level, activity/operation level, processing and business level. Moreover, contribution, delivery, and final- outcome of the firm have to be analysed.

Production costs: four key attributes¹⁵ of cost structure have patronized production cost of the industry and here R&D¹⁶ has a significant role to reduce cost of production as well as utilisation of modern technology.

Pricing strategies: for the operation of sound supply chain of fisheries in South Africa have replaced their long-term contractual pricing strategies by spot market pricing, daily bargaining option and additionally, more focused on customized product and service market segmentation.

Macro issues and current rivalry status: macro issues of the South African agro business have mostly focused on external environmental dynamics and among those, this industry has suffered from clear direction of business policies of individual macro issues¹⁷. Hence, competition in the global market has rather complex here-

Figure 7: – Macro issues and current rivalry status

Source: – Kelety (52)

Strategic Cost Management and Business Competitiveness

Inter-dependency on SCM¹⁸ of a firm’s competitive advantages as well as business sustainability have extensively influenced on superior performance of that business organisation. Traditionally, cost management has compact with per-unit base cost¹⁹ analysis of an organisation.

Conversely, apart from the cost-management, environmental analysis²⁰ has also significantly highlighted and formulated in the area of SCM.

Considering detail account of the SCM, famous business analysts have symbolized the SCM as “Strategic Success-driver” because of its smarter contribution on organisation’s long-term success. Additionally, SCM has also operated diverse strategic levels²¹ where key concept of the cost-management has primarily focus on value contribution against investment (Kelety 20).

Definition of Strategic Cost Management (SCM)

Cooper and Slagmulder (4) defined that critically SCM is a survival skill for the modern business organisations where cost reduction is not a single function. More specifically, key attributes²² of the modern competitive market have drawn the significance of SCM as well as kept profit margin. Other than cost reduction, SCM has expertly improved product’s quality and lower lead-time of product manufacturing.

Additionally, it has difficult to sustain long time during market competition whilst organisations have technologically equivalent. In short, Cooper has concluded that SCM has essential for the organisation to survive through offering customized product and service at lower price (Cooper and Slagmulder 4).

Figure 8: – strategic cost- reduction frame

Source: – Kelety (480)

Monden and Hamada (3) pointed out that SCM is a discipline that has contributed shorter PLCs²³, sharper competitive atmosphere, and customised product/services at lower costs.

On the other hand, as stated by Kato and Yoshida (4), the SCM is an applied cost management tool which has reduces costs of the company as well as holds the strategic position in the competitive marketplace though a sound supply chain management.

According to Gordon et al. (p. 1, 5), SCM is the architect for designing accountant’s potentiality of a modern business firm and hence flexible cost policies for a sustainable strategic market position.

Considering all of previously mentioned definitions Banker and Johnston (2), have constructed following four key assumptions on SCM- First, strategy formulation and second, connectivity among entire strategies of the organisation while the third is to formulate strategy implementation model and at the end, evaluate key success factors of the organisation

Figure 9: – SCM

Source: – Kelety (94)

Korpi (4) defined that SCM has the skill to discover principle factors of an organisation; as a result an array of strategic information has provided by SCM to attain vision/creative objects²⁴ of the firm. Therefore, it can be confidently affirmed that SCM has effectively reduced costs during early stages of the PLCs.

On the other hand, Hinterhuber (3) has studied that, SCM has enormous contribution on new market creation or constructing modern opportunities. Conversely, this study has evaluated that SCM is an integrated tasks or actions where stakeholders and the executives have easily taken proactive decisions.

According to the view of Lord and Lawrence (6), SCM is a mentor of directing entire costs model of an organisation and they further argued that SCM has integrated all of the strategic departments in order to attain consumer satisfaction.

Parkinson (3) described that, utilisation of cost materials have not restricted under SCM during hold profit margin and in short, SCM has built the pillar of company vision for ling time sustainability. For more clarification about SCM Porter’s view on SCM has described below.

Porter’s Theory of Strategic Cost Analysis

Defining correlation among SCM, competitiveness and business sustainability have drawn the value-chain theory during perfect competitive market. Under this discussion, Porter has argued that business competitiveness has primarily influenced by the company’s individual resource management as well as appliances of cost management.

Key concept of the theory has developed how companies would have enjoyed cost advantages under the complicated market competition. Alternatively, value-chain approach can be termed as the “Total System Solution” of an organisation (Datta 8).

Figure 10: – Porter’s value-chain approach

Source: – Kelety (144)

Escape from the traditional cost behaviour, value-chain approach has analysed long term SCM including major costs dynamics²⁵ including their behaviour on cost strategies. Point has to be noted that, SCM has to be commenced with the research and development²⁶ division in order to reduce costs of PLCs beginning phase.

According to Porter’s substitute value approach, long-term sustainability of an organisation would be developed by three major strategies²⁷.

Key concept of the Porter’s theory has stand on five major primary activities including several supporting tools. On the other hand, major cost dynamics have specialized to build cost structure of an organisation. Detail account of the major cost dynamics has presented below. (Boadu-Amanor 1-3)

Figure 11: – Porter’s substitute value-chain approach

Source: – Kelety (145)

Key Drivers of Assessing Strategic Cost Analysis

Economics of scale: economics of scale has also stood for large scale of production, which has mostly controlled by greater financial resources and hence, R & D, production volume, marketing strategies. Analysis of the PLC has quantified that larger production scale has reduced cost of production.

Experience: the term experience has denoted the proportionate advancement of organisation and its internal resources including workforces. Necessary professional training is the most effective tools in this case.

Learning curve: The learning curve has represented organisation’s movements and effectively reduced cost of the firm. Alternatively, learning has treated as an operating function of a business firm.

Utilisation of the capacities: capacity utilisation has directly influenced on per unit cost pf production. More specifically, it is a matchmaker tool of demand-supply management,

Linkages: connectivity among direct and indirect costs has defined through connectivity and except this function performance cannot be appraised,

Interrelationships: It relates an association among organisation business pattern and operating system of the organisation,

Integration scope: it is the tool of balance between supplying of raw materials and production scale those has variable impact on cost behaviour,

Time management: Lead-time management has great impact on cost drivers.

Selection of policies: cost has also influenced by the company’s both internal and external policies.

Location and institutional issues: factory location has influenced to fluctuating cost variables.

Technology: adoption of modern technology has reduced complexity of supply chain as well as cost volume.

Scope: scope to apply vertical and horizontal integration

Complexity: larger product line has generated complexity during offering services towards the consumers.

Figure 12: – Key cost drivers

Source: – Kelety (117)

Fishing Quota Regulation’s Impact on the Profitability

Deacon, David, and John added that the fishing quota is a most common strategy of the regulators to limiting the sum of catching fish annually by the fisheries and to restrict their entry in a managed form according to the season length while the objective to conservation of fishery resources (1).

Under such conservative strategy, the implications of quota would influence the capital investment by the large fishing companies but they could drive towards unrestricted inputs that would facilitate the industry for better management of restricted resources while rents and season length of the quota management has significant impact to restrain monopoly in the fishing industry.

The literature of fishery regulation has encouraged to moving from treatments paying attention on appreciative incentives as well as outcomes of the open right of entry to more up to date explorations of the outcomes of specific regulations along with the dilemmas of selecting the right policy tools for any specific situation to encounter.

There are arguments of explanation by the incentive-based fishery regulation that delivers uncertainty in the fishing industry and there is enough evidence that numerous existing regulation systems has not yet substituted with TAC²⁸ regulation that limits fisher’s entry as well as enforce the season closure form common categories of fishes.

Influence of regulation on fisheries’ strategic cost management:

Key requirement of the paper has assembled through two issues, impact of fishing quota regulation in South Africa and strategic cost management to hold profitability of the industry. Hypothetically, connectivity of these two issues has essentially needed to consider several significant components of South African fishing quota regulation as well as cost management.

In the light of ROA²⁹ model, correlation among two topics has highlighted existence of capital constraints have severely affected rents or costs of the fishing firms and during the linkage, the ROA model has quantified essential economic determinants like rent or cost of production, fish stock prices, input costs and the TAC.

Point should to note that the ROA model has rather focused on given TAC for a specified season not the steady sate equilibrium considered by the quota regulators. In doing so, ROA has firstly considered on cost functions of a fishing firm under limited entry of the TAC.

Secondly, balance between restricted fishing capacity and possible rent capture within a season and third, forecast responses of rent captured with the change of fish stock prices. Finally, cost analysis results of the fishing firms have demonstrated a critical influence of substitute elasticity on both restricted and unrestricted fish stocks and additionally, parameter of achieved efficiencies based on input regulation.

Before analysis of the cost-function equations under TAC of any fishing firm, several attributes of the ROA model has to be noted. For example, ROA regime has authorized to enjoy TAC at certain amount concerning on biological and regulatory dynamics of the fishes where supplied fishes are available at zero (0) price level and in addition, companies got the scope of FCFS³⁰.

An efficient management of the FCFS has demonstrated market competition in terms of acquiring fish stocks as well as fluctuation of fish stocks prices. Conversely, though under this circumstances stocks rents have dissipated but increase of fish stock prices have significantly influenced on increasing fish stock proportionately.

The ROA model has enlarged this rationale in order to qualify optimal rent charges through utilizing several regulation of the fishing quota and the variables required to boost fishing resources. For utmost failure of substitutions, ROA model has occupied optimal management of the safety stocks and conversely, no rent value has captured whether substitution has been effective.

On the other hand, individual competition analysis has mostly analogous towards the ROA model where goods price controlling approach has resulted from high rent risk. Following are the equations to express diverse conditions of cost analysis and fishing quota regulations in South Africa.

Equation 1, Total allowed fish catches (¯H): the beginning of season, in terms of ¯H, total allowed fish catches has quantified and expressed through following equation where variable “b” is always positive but variable “a” may be hold either positive or negative value.

Source: Deacon (8)

Equation 2, Fishing morality rate (f): assumption of fishing morality rate has composed through a concaved function in which “L” is the variable of input and “K” is the capital value of a fishing firm.

Source: Deacon (8)

Equation 3, Instantaneous effort rate: For an instantaneous effort rate, both “L & K” should to fixed for a season but varied from season to season and within an encode season, fish stocks potentiality to decline proportionately with the change of instantaneous effort rate.

Source: Deacon (9)

Equation 4 – Fully exhaust allowable fish catch (H): in regarding to equation 3, if quota regulators restricted number of allowable catch, T within an edge of “T ≤ 1” and in addition, for a given effort rate f (L, K), fully exhausted allowable fish catch is perfectly implies through following equation.

Source: Deacon (9)

Equation 5 – Total fishing effort, f (L, K) T: during solve of the equation 4, constraints on allowable fish catch equivalently make constraints on total fishing effort as following relation.

Source: Deacon (9)

Equation 6 – Total Cost (C): common personality of the fishing firms to quantify variable input costs only for an open season. In defining total cost of a firm, following equation annual per unit variable input price termed through “w,” hypothetically, which denoted as “wage rate.” According to the following equation, “r” referred rental price of annual capital during quantifying total cost of a firm.

Source: Deacon (10)

Equation 7 – Annual rent of a fishery (Π): considering “T” and “p” respectively as the annual season length and price of ex–vessel harvest annual rent for a fishery implies through following equation where “r/T” denoted as an effective price of total capital services.

Source: Deacon (10)

Equation (4) implies that restriction on total allowable fish catch limited revenue of a fishery and conversely, cost value dominated fishery’s choices for the input variables where as quota regulators make restriction on capital size as well as annual season length. During measuring total cost of a fishery, key points cantered on regulators restriction where they imposed fix quantity on “K” and “T” but fishery has preferred “L.”

Here point should to note that during impose on limited entry as well as season ending; regulators cannot deliver any roadmap for utilization of capital intensively. Alternatively, variable “K” and “L” are assigning to comparing results of efficient equilibrium and the open access equilibrium.

Regarding the comparison, firstly, the efficient equilibrium defined the scope of input choices; in addition, coordinates them to maximizing fishery’s industry rents. Under circumstances of efficient equilibrium, quota regulators worked for satisfying total fishing effort as of equation (5).

On the other hand, the open access equilibrium the regulators imposed any restriction on entry limit of any firm.

Moreover, fisheries an ‘efficient’ equilibrium in which input choices are coordinated to maximize industry rents (recognizing that the regulator will adjust the season length to satisfy (5)), and Deacon argued “an open access equilibrium in which the regulator does not limit entry, and firms expand L and K in a cost minimizing fashion so long as rent is positive.”

As described below, the case of central interest lies between these benchmark outcomes. The open access equilibrium is similar to the ROA equilibrium studied by HW, but it takes explicit account of the fact that K may be employed only part of the year. The industry’s choice of effort is optimal given the season length set by the regulator, and the regulator’s choice of season length is optimal given the effort level set by the industry.

Source: Deacon (11)

Equation 8 – Input price ratio: variable inputs and capital of a firm are two essential determinants of input price ratio as of following equation. On the other hands, cost minimizing ration “L/K” satisfied common attributes of marginal rate of substitution through utilizing both of the variable inputs and the fishery’s capital.

Source: Deacon (12)

Equation 9 – Cost function: to express cost function of a fishery following equation has widely used in fishing industry where “f” expresses constant return, the function “C (w, r /T)” implies per unit cost of total fishing effort and annual total fishing effort referred through “fT”.

Source: Deacon (12)

Equation 10 – Industry profit: most of the quota regulators aim is to satisfying total fishing effort during a year as of equation (5) through utilization of “T.” Conversely, efficiency standard management has identified that every firm of the fishing industry required paying a constant price in terms of representing vessel owners as well as coordination of “K & L” to boost rental or profit values. Finally, industry profit of a fishing firm will quantify through substituting quota regulatory constraints of allowable catch (H) (4), cost function (9) and put them into the annual rent of a fishery or profit equation (7).

Source: Deacon (12)

Equation 11 – Efficient industry profit: The efficient coordinator recognizes that the regulator’s constraint on catch fixes total effort according to f(L,K)T = E , as in (5), so the industry’s choice of f (L,K) effectively determines T.

Recognizing this, industry profit in the ‘efficient’ case can be written and T can be regarded as a choice variable for the coordinator. The industry’s best choice clearly minimizes r T subject to T ≤ 1. The obvious solution is T = 1, or full season fishing.7 To summarize, the efficient allocation uses an L, K mix that minimizes cost given the effective factor prices, w and r/T, and scales total effort to allow fishing throughout the year.

Source: Deacon (12)

Equation 12 – Zero profit condition:

Source: Deacon (14)

Equation 13 – CES form:

Source: Deacon (15)

Equation 14 – Cost function in terms of effort:

Source: Deacon (16)

Equation 15 – Average revenue:

Source: Deacon (17)

Equation 16 – Season length production:

Source: Deacon (17)

Equation 17 – Total effort:

Source: Deacon (17)

Fishing Quota Market

Due to open access, fishing market has continuously suffered a serious disaster. During 1986, New Zealand has taken unavoidable initiatives to established ITQ³¹. Within 1998, ITQ has included more around 33 categories of species along with has identified over 150 fishing market in order to enjoy individual fishing quota advantages.

Assessment of these markets have evaluated trend of the current market activates, strategic pricing structure as well as primary obligatory issues quota management pricing. Consequence of the ITQ assessment have also discovered that newly identified fishing markets have rather supportive to gain optimal competitive advantages. Additionally, under this management fishing costs have also reduced radically.

On the other hand, statistical flow chart has showed that economical impact on the behaviour of profitability has a significant trade-off among dynamics of the sale and price³² of fishes.

Effect of the cost dynamics strategic management has magnify market price of the fishes and thus fishing industry has get rather profitability than before. At the end of evaluation, market analysts have drawn a conclusion that innovation of ITQ could be an effective strategic approach for efficient market management of fishing quota (Newell, James, and Suzi 2).

Common Fishing Quota Regulation and Current Amendment

Since 1983, common fisheries policies have strategically denoted by TAC³³, which has applicable on several types of spices available in the specific sea regions. Every year States Members of EU have meet and come to a decision about the amount of aggregate fish those could land by the fleets.

The TAC policy has executed an annual cycle or calendar and every year in December members have met to discuss on current prospect, dilemmas as well as propose necessary solutions.

The key limitation of the TAC policy have not prove its efficiency on mixed fisheries firm management and additionally, have continuously faced discarding dilemmas after landing. Statistics of the discarding/leaving fishes into sea after catch has faced severe dilemmas like major portion of those fishes have either die or physically injured a lot in such way they have not live long after discarding.

From beginning of 2003, the TAC has earnestly followed the fishing recovery programs to protect and nursing EU’s most threatened fish stores and supplies. More specifically, TAC emergency fish protection program has also consider and make restriction on fishing time as well as fishing efforts to continuing the policy of fishing limit.

For instance, view point of Scottish, the TAC emergency program has more concentration on “Cod.” After walking along time, the EC³⁴ has recently proposed an amendment on TAC, fishing quotas as well as limits on fishing efforts, which have been effective from the beginning of 2010. Current amendment has referred as the scientific guideline and key points of this proposal has left behind fishing quota (Edwards 4).

South Africa and Global Fishing Quota Management

There is standard TAC fishing quota management that generate a common platform of South African Fishing Quota with global context. Firstly, for reducing of discarding in North Sea cod it would be most valuable for the fisheries to enlarge potentiality of the TAC policy to increase cod stock. Secondly, recent scientific guideline has alerted the North Sea fisheries about the poor condition of whiting stocks.

More over, in this region has suggested increasing severe cut in the fishing quotas. But the EC has stand oppose to this proposal and their argument is that though every year fishing quota has faced significant amendment, severe cut of quota management has not have any emergency role.

Thirdly, though EC has proposed for fewer sever cut of fishing quota but still now 15% substantial cut of quota has continued. Additionally, in this segmentation of fishing quota other than North Sea the West of Scotland Nephrops has also incorporated to follow TACs treatment.

Fourthly, compare tom North Sea the West of Scotland has contained poor figure in the recovered area of cods, haddocks, as well as whiting stocks. Currently, West of Scotland has keep up 25% cut of fishing quota but according to TACs, this percentage has not sufficient to recover of the point out spices.

Finally, after north and west, the Scottish fleet has considered most precious spices quota zone. Over 2009, this fishing zone has continued unmoved fishing quota. Now current amendment of the TAC has proposed 5% cut of fishing quota including Norway and Faeroes. For more clarification, UK fishing quota has illustrated in following figure.

Figure 13: – TAC fishing quota management

Source: – Edwards (6)

Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis and Profitability

Profitability analysis of an organisation has required to trade-off among three indispensable items revenue/before tax earnings, cost, and profit. Conversely, CVP is a traditional profitability analysis tool that has considered per unit activity cost of the prime cost drivers.

Under CVP, analysis the term volume has referred per unit cost of production and per unit sales price and thus it has illustrated during fluctuation of three dynamics of this analysis. In another word, CVP analysis is a framework to discuss of planning business operations along with supply of relevant data. Most of the cases CVP has utilised during early phases of business planning or production planning.

For more clarification, CVP relationships have drawn in following diagram explaining multi product issues. In case of cost assumption during this discussion, both fixed and variable costs have to include in order supporting of profit margin contribution. For the single product or service deliver variable cost have required emphasizing rather than fixed costs.

Besides production, planning CVP has also used to analyse an organisation’s overall operation like business/market segmentation. Key limitation of the CVP analysis has related between single unit cost of production and income statement utilised to quantify the number of single unit cost.

For the multiple product and service production, CVP has required to consider volume of production either by production volume or by amount required to produce target volume or both. Key benefit of multiple productions that it has reduced cost of production dramatically.

Additionally, income statement analysis of multiple productions under CVP has required diverse cost drivers account and here single unit cost have contained high cost to produce but aggregately gain high profit margin.

Finally, it has urgent to consider significantly that multiple production’s income statement should to be design in such a way that at the same time it has fulfilled organisation demands as well as consumers needs al well (Morse 19).

Research Methodology

Introduction

The process of formulating the paper, research designing, data collecting methods, importance of primary data and secondary dada, data measuring systems, and questionnaire designing are the main concern of this chapter. As a result, this chapter will play vital role to provide a clear perception about the chosen research method that is essential for the formulation of this dissertation.

However, many scholars like Sekaran (5) stated “research as an organised, systematic, data-based, critical, objective, scientific inquiry or investigation into specific problem, undertaken with the purpose of finding answers or solutions to it”.

Research Design

Saunders, Thornhill, and Lewis (33) and Cohen, Lawrence and Keith (75) focused on mainly two important research methods, for instance, qualitative and quantitative researches.

However, Sekaran (5), “qualitative research is playing vital role when some facts are known, but more information is needed for developing a viable theoretical framework” and Malhotra (29) further added, “quantitative research approach will assist to reach a conclusion by quantify the collected primary data”.

At the same time, the researcher of this dissertation will follow six major steps to formulate this paper and this steps are “problem definition, development of an approach to the problem, research design formulation fieldwork or data collection, data preparation and analysis, report preparation and presentation” (Malhotra, 9).

Primary Data

Cohen, Manion & Morrison (85) pointed out that the researcher should gather the primary data due to serve the exact purpose by specifying the current research problem, and Zikmund (62) further addressed that the researcher should collect such data to formulate the paper with real research from the actual site of occurrence of events.

The researcher will conduct field survey though this process of data collection need long-time; however, the author must take the advantage of advance technology to collect primary data from some of employees of Irvin & Johnson Limited (I&J) who are busy with their job but would like to help the researcher at their convenient time.

However, the author have decided to use such data because the impact of fishing quota regulation on the Fishing Industry in South Africa can be obtained from available published reports, which will assist the reader to understand the role of fishing quota, but this process may not contribute to identify research dilemmas regarding the case of the selected company.

The researcher concentrate on the overall impact of new fishing quota on environment and safety issues, the position of fisheries in terms of implementation, affect on annual revenue and investment, compares of old system with the new fishing regulations, political influence upon quota allocation, attitude of the selected employees on the new quota regulation and impact on small fisheries.

Interviews Method

Malhotra (172) argued that personal interviewing method is the best process to gather primary data but face-to-face interview is difficult to conduct because of high cost and lack of sufficient time; as a result, the researcher decided to gather primary data by applying face-to-face interviewing method.

On the other hand, the researcher will not use other instantaneous method (such as, electronic interviewing) though this type of method is flexible to collect data in terms of time and cost.

Secondary data

Cohen, Manion & Morrison (86) stated that secondary data has already exists and prepared data, and Malhotra (107) added that it is essential to study secondary data as it give general knowledge about the research problem and help to gather primary data.

In addition, Yin (35) and Zikmund (74) expressed that this sources are more dependable because these sources have already recognized by the renowned publishers, universities, or scholars. According to the view of Malhotra (107), the main advantage of secondary data is low time required, and easy to collect at comparatively lower costs, and some useful sources are accessible at free of costs.

Figure 14: – The categorization of published secondary data sources

Source: – Self generated from Malhotra (110)

Therefore, this study would be more resourceful and upgrade by taking information from different official documents, for example, different accounting reports on I&J, official documents of Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT), Ministry of Commerce, International Monetary Fund, EU reports, Marine and Coastal Management (MCM) and so on.

At the same time, the researcher will use other secondary documents like available journal articles on the topic, white paper on the Marine Living Resources Act 1998 to know the intension to pass this Act, management and law books, magazine, and other published prior study, statistical reports, relevant case studies, and conference papers to develop the quality of this dissertation.

Data Analysis procedure

The respondents will fill out the questionnaire or the researcher will complete the questionnaire in accordance with the response of the face-to-face interview to analyze the collected data. In order to do so, the author will use many techniques, for instance, design a primary plan to verify collected data to revise, edit, or inquire that all the survey forms have completed properly.

However, Marshall & Rossman (203) stated, “Data cleaning includes consistency checks and treatment of missing responses” and Malhotra (409) argued, “Consistency checks identify data that are out of range, logically inconsistent, or have extreme values”.

Moreover, Miles & Huberman (158) stated, “editing is the review of the questionnaires to check inconsistency while unsatisfactory responses are usually handled by returning to the field to gather better data, assigning missing values, or discarding unacceptable interviewees”.

At initial stage, the researcher will check all the survey forms in order to remove unsuited or conflicting data, and eradicate unintentional errors about the impact of fishing quota regulation in the fishing industry of South Africa.

Graphically represent the data in findings chapter by using Microsoft excel is one of the important goal of the researcher to show the result; therefore, this dissertation will concentrate on the comparing the outcomes of primary data with the outcomes of the secondary data regarding the fishing quota regulation in the fishing industry of South Africa.

Significance of Primary and Secondary data

Secondary data is important to provide theoretical framework of the financial reporting system, to select research methods for the study, to consider overall research objectives. On the other hand, chapter four findings and results, and chapter six recommendations will be based on the survey report; so both primary and secondary is crucial to formulate this dissertation.

Table 1: – Selected importance of primary and secondary data

Source: – Self generated

Questionnaire Design

According to the view of Saunders, Thornhill and Lewis (188), the answers of survey forms will assist the author providing solutions to the policy makers as well as government bodies.

As a result, the author will consider several techniques, such as, finding out the required information, and selecting data collecting method for this study, finding the content of the questions, organizing the question structure inconsistent with the research aims.

At the same time, the researcher organizes the questionnaire with structured questions to search out specific response, therefore, the interviewees will get interest to complete the whole form and provide particular answer addressing the research gap.

However, the researcher will focus more on the global fishing regulation influence in the fishing regulation that govern financial reports in South Africa, what interests existing rule serves, who influenced by these rules, and how these rules affected the operation of large and small fishing companies.

The researcher will emphasize these questions, as these are necessary to understand and assess the emergence of regulation in South Africa. In order to give a clear idea about the questionnaire, the subsequent table shows the content of two parts –

Figure 15: – The questionnaire design process

Source: – Self generated from Malhotra (281)

The researcher will consider a number of issues though designing a questionnaire is an art rather than a science, for instance –

• Effort required of the interviewees: most interviewees are reluctant to devote a lot of effort to provide information; so, initial questions should be interesting, easy, and not hostile;
• Context: questionnaire should consist of relevant questions; otherwise, interviewees will no response.
• Sensitive information: The researcher will cautious about sensitive issues because the respondents are unwilling to reveal sensitive information as this may cause embarrassment or threaten the respondent’s prestige or self-image;
• Structured Questions: the questionnaire will be consist of structured question, which will specify the set of response alternatives and the response format;
• Wording: Considering the vocabulary level of the respondent, the researcher will use simple and unambiguous words in the questionnaire;
• Logical order: questions will be organized in a proper order ;

Other: the researcher will scrutinize all the issues including question content, wording, sequence, form and layout, question difficulty, and instruction.

Measurement and scaling process

The aim of this part is to give an idea about the various measurements and scaling process of the data and it will mention the useful scale for this dissertation.

• Nominal scales: This kind of measurement process point out non-numerical questions, such as, name of the target respondents, nationality or job experience, and some other initial information about the respondents;
• Ordinal scales: This type of measurement system concentrate on definite questions so as to assess relative attitudes of the employees;
• Multiple Choice – Single Response: In this stage, employees of I&J Fishing Company will get at least three options, but they need to select only one option from three options;

However, the following table would help to understand the measurement procedure –

Table 2: – Measurement stage with Scale Types in Questionnaire

Source: – Self generated

Reliability and Validity of Interviews

Here, it is essential to find out the inspiration to conduct field survey to collect primary data from the employees of I&J, and why the researcher is not only relies on the secondary resources.

According to the view of the researcher of this study, the most notable enthusiasm to conduct survey is that, knowing the opinion to the employees of I&J would play vital role to understand the real impact of fishing quota regulation on the Fishing Industry of South Africa.

In addition, the employees of I&J have more clear knowledge about the conceptual framework of quota links with business competitiveness and sustainability, strategic cost management in business environment, impact of new quota allocation on the fishing industry.

Figure 16: – Testing Goodness of Measures: Forms of Reliability and Validity

Source: – Self generated from Sekaran (204)

Limitation of Data Collection Process

Firstly, collection of primary data by using face-to-face interviewing method is the most difficult job to the researcher of this dissertation as the budget and time both were too short to complete the dissertation on time. In addition, most of the respondents sent the paper after completing major tasks and some of them was not co-operative at the time of interviewing process; so, their was risk to make some simple mistakes.

Find out the appropriate secondary data was also another challenging job for the researcher, as many academic journals, books, and other internet sources were easy to access but most of the journal reports were subject to purchases, and some internet sources are not authentic; therefore, this unreliable data sources can misguide the researcher in some point.

Finally, it was really unfortunate to the researcher that some renowned site sell journal article at high price; here, the problem was that it is difficult to understand by reading abstract and outline whether the articles important or not.

Findings And Results

The questionnaire has initially designed to address the first realistic impression of the major commercial fishing sectors of South Africa through the case study of I&J and then involved to keep a role in the progress of a sound policy framework identifying the lacking for appropriate policy guidance.

To assess the impact of fishing quota regulation in the fishing industry of South Africa in context of case I&J, this survey Questionnaire has organized for the target respondents aiming to the Captains directly concerned with fishing in the South African region and the business level executives engaged in different level of I&J concerned with quota related trading.

The responds of the Captains of different Vessel class of I&J are very significant in context of deep see fishing after the adoption of quota regulation while the business level executives are facing regular market attitudes concerned with the quota legislation.

The aim of the researcher is to analyze the response of the survey questionnaire to assess Impact of fishing quota regulation on the fishing industry of South Africa, particularly on the Irvin & Johnson (I&J).

However, it should need to address that the author distributed the questionnaire to 60 employees of the selected company, and 40 respondents gave their feedback at their convenient time. The researcher is going to carry on the research with 40 survey reports considering that rest of the respondents may not give feedback within timeframe.

General Information regarding the employees

Name, and Contact details of the employees of I&J

The aim of this question is to introduce with the employees to make sure that they are selected employees to carry out the survey for research on this topic.

Awareness of the employees about fishing quota

Before attempt to proceed on the next form, it is essential to know that whether the employees have general idea about fishing quota or not. Knowledge about the research area is significant factor in order to get proper outcome and avoid fabricated information; so, only those employees will proceed to the form B who can give correct perception of the impact of fishing quota.

Result

It has already mentioned that the researcher got feedback from 40 employees and all fill out both form A and form B, as all were aware about fishing quota.

View of the Employees

Do you think that the overall impact of new fishing quota would ensure safety for fishery resources?

About 70% of the employees agreed that new fishing quota would ensure safety for fishery resources, 25% employees disagreed with statement, and only 5% employees preferred not to say option.

Figure 17: – Employees’ view about safety issues of fishery resources

Source: Self generated from survey report

Result: According to the primary data, new law will help to increase fish stock in this zone because 70% of employees agreed with the statement. Before introducing new law, there was no rule regarding the size of ocean going vessels, category of using nets, and length of season to catch fish.

Do you think that the new fishing quota management system would be easy compliance option for the fisheries?

It is interesting that about all respondents reply this question, and 55% of the employees stated that new fishing quota regulation is easy to comply, and 45% employees disagreed with this statement.

Figure 18: – Employees’ view about the compliance of law

Source: – Self generated from survey report

Result:– The response demonstrates the fact that 22 employees of the Irvin & Johnson companies argued that new law easy to comply while 18 employees disagreed with the statement. On the other hand, secondary data demonstrated that small fisheries seriously affected due to the strict fishing quota system; so, it is not easy for them to obey this system.

Are the fisheries honest to obey new fishing quota regulation?

As per response to this question, 55% of respondents appreciated the fact that Irvin & Johnson honestly implement the fishing quota regulation while 37.5% respondents disagreed of this statement and 7.5% employees were reluctant to response.

Figure 19: – Respondents opinion regarding the company’s position

Source: – Self generated from survey report

Result:– A significant portion of the respondents argued that Irvin & Johnson does not follow the regulation honestly, though the respondents worked for this company. Therefore, the company should follow the regulation strictly and honestly in order to help the authority to increase stock.

Is the new fishing quota regulation has reduced your annual productivity?

Amongst 40 target respondents, 75% employees pointed out that present rule has not decreased annual productivity of Irvin & Johnson, 20% employees believed that it would reduced productivity and 5% had not observed any change.

Figure 20: – Employees’ view regarding productivity of I&J

Source: – Self generated from survey data

Result: – According to the majority of the respondents, the existing rule has not reduced productivity, so the company should honestly implement this regulation to establish good corporate governance practice.

Is the new fishing quota regulation has directly reduced your annual revenue?

It was an inevitable outcome that most of the employees would disagreed with the statement, for instance, about 65% employees stated that the annual revenue of Irvin & Johnson has not decreased due to the regulation, and only 20% employees agreed this statement and 15% had no opinion.

Figure 21: – Employees’ view regarding the impact on annual revenue of I&J

Source: – Self generated from survey reports

Result:– As most of the employees believed that new rule has not reduced productivity, it has no direct impact on the annual revenue of I&J. in addition, this company become market leader of fishing industry in South Africa and enjoy the facilities provided by this quota regulation.

Is the new fishing quota regulation has driven your company to go for harvesting?

About 87.5% of the employees stated that new fishing quota regulation has influenced the company to go for harvesting, and 22.5% employees disagreed with the statement.

Figure 22: – Employees’ view regarding harvesting project of I&J

Source: – Self generated from survey reports

Result:– Irvin & Johnson has driven to harvesting in order to increase natural fishing stock, as this company is no longer interested to depend only on natural stock.

Is it involved your company for bulk investment?

According to the survey report, about 77.5% of the employees agreed this statement, 12.5% employees selected no option, and 10% employees had no idea about invest position after introduction of new law.

Figure 23: – Employees’ view regarding investment condition of I&J

Source: – Self generated from survey reports

Result: – From the response of the employees, it is clear that large fisheries would require huge investment to implement new fishing quota system.

Are there any government subsidizing packages to complying with the new fishing quota regulation?

Most the respondents believed that there are some government subsidizing packages to comply with the new fishing quota regulation, for instance, 87.5% employees strongly agreed with this statement, 5% employees disagreed, and 7.5% employees had not comment on this issue.

Figure 24: – Employees’ view regarding government subsidizing packages

Source: – Self generated from survey reports

Result: – The above figure demonstrates that the government provide sufficient government subsidizing packages for helping large fisheries to implement fishing quota regulation successfully.

Do you think that the old fishing management was better than the new fishing quota regulation under your current operation?

It is important to note that about 80%of the target respondents have agreed to the fact that the old fishing management was better than the new fishing quota regulation, 12.5% of these employees disagreed to this statement, and rest 7.5% employees had no comments.

Figure 25: – Сompare the old rule with new quota system

Source: – Self generated from survey reports

Result: – Despite the fact that old regulation destroyed the fishing stock, most of the respondents argued that old law was better than new law. The reason behind their opinion is they enjoyed more flexibility under old regulation “the Sea Fisheries Act 1989” in terms of vessel used, fishing season, and so on.

Do you think that the new quota regulation system is allocating quota fairly among the fisheries?

Among 40 employees, 60% of the respondents agreed that the new quota regulation system is allocating quota fairly among the fisheries, 35% employees said no option, and 5% employees had no opinion.

Figure 26: – Employees’ view regarding quota allocation system under new regulation

Source: – Self generated from survey reports

Result: – The survey reports illustrate that majority of the respondents have no doubt with the fairness of quota allocation system under new fishing regulation, but a significant portion disagreed the view because small fisheries adversely affected due to the discrimination.

Is there any political influence upon quota allocation?

According to the survey reports, 55% of the employees agreed with the fact that there is political influence upon quota allocation, but 40% employees disagreed with the statement, and 5% employees were not aware about this.

Figure 27: – Employees’ view regarding political influence of quota system

Source: – Self generated from survey reports

Result:– The existing fishing quota regulation need additional amendment to make potential improvement in order to remove political influence as most of the respondents acknowledged the existence of political influence.

Do you think that the new quota regulation system has facilitated small fisheries and family fishers?

In reply to this question, 40% of total employees stated that new quota regulation system has facilitated small fisheries and family fishers, 47.5% employees disagreed with the statement and only 12.5% employees provided no opinion on this issue.

Figure 28: – Employees view regarding influence on small companies

Source: – Self generated from survey report

Result:– The purpose of this question was to find out what is the actual impact on the small fisheries in new environment and the survey results showed that quota system mainly assists large companies to make profit.

Do you think that the new quota regulation has contributed you better company far better than before?

It is important to note that among 40 employees, about 55% of the interviewees agreed with the fact that the new quota regulation has more contribution on the Irvin & Johnson, 40% disagreed with this statement, while the rest 5% employees prefer not to say regarding this issue.

Figure 29: – Respondents opinion regarding contribution of regulation on I&J

Source: – Self generated from survey report

Result:– Indeed, it is widely accepted that new regulation gives more opportunity but a significant number of the respondents opposed this view.

Is your attitude towards the new quota regulation system is positive?

Amongst the total respondents, 95% people remain positive whereas the rest 5% argued negatively.

Figure 30: – Customers’ opinion about frequency of contact

Source: – Self generated from survey reports

Result: It was amazing to find out that the highest number of interviewees has responded positively.

Do you thing that the new quota regulation system would be capable to increase the sustainability of fishing resources?

Among 40 survey reports, 75% of the employees stated that new quota regulation system would be capable to increase the sustainability of fishing resources, 20% of the employees disagreed with the fact, and 5% employees had no opinion in this issue.

Figure 31: – Employees’ view regarding political influence of quota system

Source: – Self generated from survey reports

Result: If the fisheries implement and follow new fishing regulation honestly, the stock would be increase because the purpose of the Marine Living Resources Act 1998 was to increase the fish stock.

Does the new quota regulation system would be successful to reduce environmental hazards?

The researcher designed this question to assess the impact of new fishing regulation on the environment and find out that 92.5% of the employees agreed with the statement and only 7.5% employees disagreed with the statement.

Figure 32: – Employees’ view regarding the impact quota system on environment

Source: – Self generated from survey reports

Result: It is significant to note that 38 respondents believed new quota system would help to protect the environment from the adverse impact of illegal fishing, which destroyed ecological balance.

Is your company’s expected revenue from a TAC has reached in the target?

It has been found that 65% employees were aware agreed this statement, 25% employees disagreed, and 10% employees had no estimation regarding expected revenue from Total Allowable Catches (TAC).

Figure 33: Employees’ view on expected revenue from a TAC

Source: – Self generated from survey reports

Do you agree to purchase quota from the small rights holder while they are not a boat owner with burden?

It is interesting that 40% of the employees selected yes option and 50% selected no option and 10% employees was selected preferred not to say. This means at least 20 employees would not support the company Irvin & Johnson to purchase quota from the small rights holder while they are not a boat owner with burden.

Figure 34: – Employees view about to purchase quota from the small rights holder

Source: Self generated from survey reports

Result:– The result shows the fact that Irvin & Johnson have maintained good corporate governance system, so they are more concern to comply fishing quota regulation rather than making profit by purchasing minority shares.

It is important to note that it would not be possible for small companies to carry out business in new system as only five large companies controlled South African fishing industry. The majority employees’ view is correct while we consider the position of small fisheries in such competitive market.

Discussion

Initiative of I&J to gain business competitiveness and sustainability:

Company profile of Irvin & Johnson Limited:

Irvin & Johnson Limited is famous fishing company in South Africa, which has born in 1910 and stayed at Cape Town. For hundred years, I&J has significantly contributed in South African economic growth. Factories of the I&J Limited has scattered through vast areas³⁵ of the South Africa major business operation of the I&J Limited has to process and sales of frozen as well as chill convenience fish foods all over the South Africa.

Their business operation has also included large number of product line offerings³⁶ and product line of I&J has integrated almost 50 different foods items. Other than diverse fish foods the I&J has also processes and sale of vegetable, fruit, red meat, chicken and beef tilting junk foods.

Additionally, the company has available of self-made marinated, diet and healthy heart supported foods menu, endorsed products for weightless, both adult, teenagers and kids individual foods menu at a reasonable price level.

Apart from South Africa, the I&J has also exports their fish products in Australia as well as in the Pacific Rim nations. Another key information about the I&J is that it has operated their business operations as the subsidiary of the AVI Ltd company. In following table snapshoot of the I&J Limited has plotted. (Irvin & Johnson 1)

Table 3: Irvin & Johnson (2)

Current rivals in South Africa as well as Middle East³⁷

Table 4: – current competitors of the Irvin & Johnson Limited

Table 5: list of related organisation (Source: mbendi.com 1)

Competitive scenario and value chain of I&J

BCLME (10) pointed out that the fishing species in hakes rise and fall mostly 30% per annum in South Africa and in 2004 it was estimated supposed to 140 000 tons where the major part was congregated by Irvin & Johnson (I&J).

The creation of job opportunities by Irvin & Johnson (I&J) were enough explicit though there is enough pressure from the society and regulatory authority to maintain jobs in the course of their shore-based dispensation regardless to the short term profitability.

However I&J has the both financial and physical resources to maximising the economic value of its hake catch and to increase the number of enough freezer trawlers while its efficiency to address best industry needs that provide long term risk free financial benefits and effective const management.

With a prolonged historical background I&J the is running its business with profitably apprehend with most added value manner though new quota regulation keeps pressure to take advantage on its value chain.

Maintaining the long-term quotas regulation along with flexibility in fishing process, I&J is in practice to add more innovative value added products in the market. The belonging controversy of South Africa’s hake firmer and whiter, I&J is more attentive to adding value through producing ‘skin off’ fillets along with benefits gained from an global market premiums.

Meanwhile the value chain of I&J is evidently affected by quota regulation and government the policies certainly affect the value chain of the company from different perspectives and the most influential one is the quantity of annual harvesting.

The long-term quota regulations will give more confidence to the company to maximise profitably and encourage it to involve elevated capital investments essential to adding value to its product line. Another essential factor to increase value is the co-management that can facilitate to reduce risk factors and ensure sustainable fishing practices in South Africa. Following figure demonstrate the value chain of I&J –

Figure 35: – Value Chain of I&J

Source: – Self generated from BCLME (14)

Market sustainability

At the beginning of 2009 it has rather tough for I&J to maximise their economic volume. However, sustainability during South African fish market, I&J has a lot of modern initiatives through utilization of modern expertise resources during production of the fishes.

Not only in South Africa but also for the first time in world I&J has introduced silver kob in order to spawn and additionally, larvae rearing by employment of weaning. Algoa Bay is the natural supplier of the silver kob due to its temperature profile and under this circumstance I&J has got advantages to produce more spices as well as fish foods.

Consequently, availability of natural resources as production infrastructure along with near to harbour like the Port Elizabeth have also made easier span of sustainable market of the I&J. moreover, independent monitoring, inspection and auditing authorities of the I&J such as universities have provided necessary instructions for sustainable market. Apart from successes stories of I&J, lets have a look on the constrains of this company.

Since factories have located proximity to the sea region it has difficult for the I&J to relate hypothetical market sustainability issues and additionally, market of fishes have rather sensitive than any other industries. In this case, sea storms and related natural disasters are the most prime obstacles to resist economical cost controlling and conversely, high cost of spices production.

Here it has to be quoted that in different region cost of spices production has varied and, market sustainability of the industry has forced by the price index and consumer choice aggregately. Finally, viewpoint of environment pollution has great risk of benthic substrate pollution of the surrounding areas of the factories. (Landman 9)

Strategic Cost Management of I&J Under Quota Regulation

Quota regulation in South Africa and position of I&J

All over the world, it has greater significant to be aware of environmental issues during business operations and for the fish industry and fishing quota regulation land, water and air have required risk free commercial ventures to keep an healthy atmosphere. Environmental awareness under fishing quota regulation I&J has several significant and positive initiatives.

I&J has formulated their business strategies considering legislation issues under fishing quotas. In this case, they have more concern on management of marine resources as well as pollution where both internal and external business strategies of I&J has committed to follow regulation of immature fish catching. For instance, health, and hygiene environment for the immature spices I&J has 800-trained employees.

According to the code of conduct of the M and C³⁸ for fishing I&J has several significant and optimistic trade-offs among fishing authorities and organizations to promote key purpose of the marine conservation taken by the South African government as well as fishing quota management.

I&J initiatives has also attracted common people of the South Africa to participate in conserve marine atmosphere of the South Africa as well as natural resources. In doing so, I&J has taken several projects and one of them is to distribute 62,000 NMD³⁹ posters among common people⁴⁰ and especially for the students of DEAT⁴¹. Since 1995, I&J has supplied necessary foods during a year of marine life stayed at the Cape Town.

Meanwhile, I&J has also arranged “Two Oceans Aquarium” exhibition, which has titled as “I&J Predator Exhibit”. Since last 17 years, I&J has sponsored to publish colour posters to educate South African peoples about the marine creatures placed in South Africa.

These materials have great popular al over the South Africa⁴². To be aware of fishing quota and marine conservations, I&J has another imitative to sponsor for the marine pages published by the Envirokids magazine so that primary children would learn on South African W&ES⁴³.

To promote fishing quota in South Africa, I&J has produced and distributed the Pelagic Seabirds posters among students and researchers and hence, this project has supported the fisheries industry as well as fishermen to prevent unexpected seabird fatalities due to prone.

At the end of this topic, it has also pointed that for any type of environmental issues in South Africa I&J has supported and participate in the creation of enviropaedia.

Cost management of I&J

The following table has described the trade-off among number of vessels and capital volume of I&J. within their 100 years experience, it has indicted that small size vessels has not an indicator of the company volume or size.

Figure 36: – A composition of I&J’s group vessels dynamics

Source: – Rhodes University (124)

Commonly, South African commercial fishing business operation has divided by five categories⁴⁴ and CVP analysis of this sector has illustrated by firm size along with its capital volume. According to the requirement of this part, here capital and market scale of I&J has discussed.

However, in case of ESS vessel of I&J most of time they have conveyed unreliable data as well as variable terms of entities. Hence, it has quite difficult to arranging primary sector base fishing cost analysis in case of vessels including I&J’s vessel level of types. In following graph, different types of vessel of I&J along with average capital volume have plotted. (Rhodes University 123 – 125)

Figure 37: – I&J vessel types and capital values

Source: – Rhodes University (123)

The direct affect of quota on the profitability of I & J

Profitability scenario of I&J

According to the TAC, South African aggregate catch quantity has reduced by 3.3 % during 2008 and again has reduced by 9.2 % during 2009. In short, aggregate reduction of allowable catch has reduced 28% and in terms of quantity it has reduced from (33,531–33,199) tons.

Conversely, in the Argentina reduction of TAC has not at large amount during 2009 and it was 1.9% and hence 19,875 tons in the Alpesca. Here it has to be pointed that I&J’s hake resource as well as ocean conservation has monitored and controlled by the MCM⁴⁵, which is the prime division of South African DEA⁴⁶.

From 2007, I&J hakes has developed in such a way that has encouraged dramatically magnifying aggregate bio-mass along with increase of allowable catch including material improvements as well. Hence, I&J has wished rather to modern their MCM recording, monitoring and controlling from this year (AVI 13).

Figure 38: – Impact of Quota on I&J profitability

Source: – AVI (13)

Compare to 2008, in 2009 aggregate revenue of I&J has increased from (R6.7 – R7.5) billion where consolidated gross profit margin has reduced from (41.3 – 39.9) % due to high cost pressures and additionally, increased only sales prices of I&J products.

Within 2009, total selling and administrative cost of the company has 6.1% of the revenue and where operation profit margin has increased by 13.7% and in terms of quantity it has R908.5 million. Conversely, because of high interest rates totals financial charges have increased from (R64 – R125) million.

In case of stock scenario, headline earnings of I&J has enlarged by 6.9% or R520.4 million where per share headline earnings has increased by 9.9% and in terms of WACC and number of shares 174.7 cents per share. A significant event, with 12 months from July 2008 to June 2009 any single share of I&J has not repurchased.

Before tax payment capital item of I&J has quantified by R17.1 million and from there profit margin from sales volume has amounted by R23.8 million. Cash generation in 2009 has dramatically increased by 67.1% and amounted by R1, 116.6 million and this improvement has reduced working capital of I&J by 19.7% in sales region, which was 16.8% during 2008.

During the fiscal year of 2008, I&J has paid tax of R392.9 million where capital expenses has amounted by R257.8 million along with dividend of R 724.4 million. As part of long-term fishing fleet replacement, I&J has required spending R42.8 million in the area of additional vessel (AVI 17).

Figure 39: – I&J group financial report

Source: -AVI (17)

Influences of quota on the profit margin of I&J

Fishing quota has given the opportunity for the first time to I&J to cultivate indigenous spices. Key benefit of this cultivation is that both domestic and international fish markets have huge demand and thus profit margin of I&J has boosted. Conversely, grow out through refining as well as supply of seed of these spices has superior business scope to build a sound supply chain management to produce indigenous spices from South Africa.

Not only high profit margin of I&J, production and supply of indigenous spices have reduced unemployment dilemmas of South Africa and hence national economic development. Moreover, indigenous spices cultivation has skilled fish farming of the South Africa improve supply chain modes as well as developed support service infrastructures of this industry.

Other than high profit margin, I&J has suffered several constrains against their profit growth those have composed of both socio-cultural as well as natural disasters. At first, coast of the South Africa has globally famous for winter storms and thus this obstacle has resisted fish farming proximity to the South African coast.

Though I&J has tried hard and soul to construct cages in such way to defend as well as mitigated the threats of these natural disasters, but the key problem of this initiative has resisted economical workplace circumstances.

On the other hand, to obey the code of conducts of the south African fishing quota I&J has required to locate their cages at demarcated places where have threats of theft and not adequate scope to monitor from the “Port Control Tower” at night as well as in public holidays. Additionally, sharks along with seals have left threats of natural predators for firming as well ass fishing culture executions during the authorized areas.

Finally, suppositious view of the common people on farmed spices along with several environmental pollution issues like sewerage, outfall left by ships as well as metropolitan (Landman 9-10).

Figure 40: – Quota management and profit margin of I&J

Source: – AVI (13)

Conclusion

Recommendations

The impact of quota regulation on fishing industry of South Africa as well as case analysis of I&J are two prime issues of the paper; therefore, both literatures and case analysis illustrated how strategic cost management of the fisheries has kept profitability and business sustainability as well as how to reduce their struggle.

Under this supervision, practice of strategic cost management in the light of fishing quota management in South Africa, I&J and the other famous fisheries faced several limitations of revenue generation as well as required to keep the stock of fish as prescribed by the fishing quota.

In order to overcome from these dilemmas this part has prescribed a set of recommendations for smoother application of quota regulations as well as cost management.

Government initiatives to restructuring constitutional efficiencies for decentralization of current management framework

Case analysis of the South African fishing industry as well as their quota regulations discovered that 75% of the market share possessed by small number of big giants where, historically white empowerment dominant rather than black owned small and medium companies.

In order to relief from this centralisation dilemma, government should have to pay attention on restructuring of fishing industry with the aid of Section 9, sub-section 2 since, the Constitutional framework suggested effective measures to gain equality as well as decentralisation of the fishing rights through two fundamental strategies.

Firstly, reallocation of current TAC requirements where total allowable fish catch has not yet fulfilled applicable quotas during open season. Secondly, application of the Section 2(j) and Section 18, sub-section 5 due to delivering prominent status of the granting quotas during transformation of the existing industry.

More specifically, encouraging new entrants specially black owned firms to free from the historical demerits, but government should to alert on losing fishing power by transferability in significant region (Saflii 2).

Reformation of government policies to establish ideal fishing agenda for the black fisheries

Present government is highly enthusiastic to addressing people’s choice and acceptation whilst reforming fishery sector and fishing policies of the government. In doing so, government should to more emphasis on struggle of the black stakeholders along with RDP program as of election commitments rather than ANC. Since ANC has greatly slower significance dynamics of both politics and society.

Two strategies would support African government to lessen challenges of the fishing industry and to make easy access of the black fisheries. First, reallocate nature of access rights into fishing industry by balancing rights of the individuals as well as the state.

Moreover, the government’s second agenda should to work for re–positioning user groups and their interests during formulation and implementation of Ministerial strategies. In this way, government could be able to forming time-honoured initiatives to justify both positive and negative impact of fishing quota on economic development of South Africa (Mayekiso et al. 2).

Responsibility of the fisheries

At present globally, fish are the most demand full traded food commodity. In regarding this issue, two parties evolved with diverse opinions where one group claimed that fish trading as an important tool of generating national income. On the other hand, another party exposed that trade of fish is a great threat for global and domestic food security.

Standing in front of two oppose views, South African fisheries have several socio–economic responsibilities for the development of domestic economy as well as for a stable food security.

Escape from pessimistic views responsibilities of South Africa fisheries can categorize through four major tools like, contribution on State’s production export, contribution on per capita income through export revenue, proper implementation of fishery deeds of both domestic and international specially, fisheries deed among south African nations and European Union nations.

Finally, it should to quote that trade of fish has not only influence on nation’s economic development also significantly reduce unemployment dilemmas, meet the animal protein of society and most importantly, keep the balance of natural ecosystem as well as food chain. (Béné 3–14)

Sustainability of the fish stock in a favourable atmosphere

To facilitate durable sustainability of the South African fish stocks it would be more wiser to reform current fishing methods by utilizing small vessels and in addition, explicit latest fisheries legislation namely the MLR⁴⁷ Act that principally contained the attributes of equal opportunity, sustainability as well stability of fishing stocks.

Alternatively, Northern Cape Province would be an ideal source of new fish and matriculture zone. On the other hand, an immediate emphasise on small scale fishing⁴⁸ and additionally, promote them will have contribute a durable fishing stock sustainability.

Moreover, resource management of fishing and Mari culture would be providing emerging economic development of the state if inventories of the fishing executed appropriately. And finally, FAMDA⁴⁹ will be most modern initiative for most supporting tools of fishing sustainability in South Africa as well as effective promoting tools of aquaculture development. (Britz et al 1 – 9)

Appraisal performance of the fishing quota regulation to explore the effectiveness of strategic tools of cost management

This recommendation has prescribed how to follow an efficient and strategic cost method therefore, fishing quota regulations of South Africa would not be hampered business profitability and durable sustainability.

In the light of this argument, performance appraisal and cost management of South African fisheries would be more effective if they will follow four stage management regimes during constructing cost structure of their company. Firstly, proper implementation of TAE⁵⁰ has radically efficient to reducing fisheries total cost volume.

And here, cost control would be termed as the output control regarding the relationship among input control and limitation of the TACs. On the other hand, cost criteria should to involving in three areas namely, MSC⁵¹, research costs and enforcement costs.

Though commonly, fisheries management regimes of a country limited through biomass extraction and for this reason, vessel costs has required least cost value where as fish production and research cost required larger cost volume. Considering this aspect, economic cost management of the South African Hake’s would make them more sustainable.

Conversely, major limitation of cost structure would have minimised through appropriate TACs during open and restricted season, required entire technical support of a fishery, impose time limit for the fishing vessels and at last, make limit on number of vessels as well as their category to authorise to catch fish. (Zableckis et al. 3-65)

Figure 41: Cost segments of a fishery

Source: Zableckis et al. (41)

Conclusion

The entire paper has briefly illustrated that what are the impact of fishing quota regulations on fishing industries in South Africa with key limitations and potential recommendations. Additionally, the paper has also emphasised impact on strategic cost functions in the light of quota regulations.

In this concluding part, it should to inform that fisheries management, fisheries policies and the constitutional frame of South Africa has highly appreciated in global fishing industries. On the other hand, regarding the complete paper, impact of quota regulation in African region has currently faced crisis of proper application of the fisheries legislation through an efficient and effective manner in the area of durable commercial markets.

Alternatively, method of TAC is now considered most reliable as brief codification policies of South African fisheries that have complete guideline of strategic cost functions for all kind of fisheries entity. From this view, though the current fisheries policies have some operational complexities, but compare to another decade South African fisheries has currently passed most challenging as well as fascinating stage.

Complete effort of government and existing fishing companies would easily recover the current dilemmas if they would amend the entry regulations of new companies with an equity facility. Moreover, make a flexible market for the black owned small and medium enterprises with new coastal and vessel zone for fish production would also mobilise Africa’s National Vision of 2030 for development of fishing industry.

At the end of this part, here also quoted that, by reducing white empowerment, reallocation and reformation of current quota regulation would foster government policies of fisheries development as well as cost effective for the existing and potential industries for a long lasting business stability.

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Footnotes

¹ Individual Vessel Quota

² Individual Transferable Quota

³ African National Congress

⁴ Reconstruction and Development Programme

⁵ Model-Assisted Sampling

⁶ Monthly, quarterly and yearly

⁷ Production, selling and human resource management (HRM)

⁸ Features and functions; negotiating about price and delivery; or handling objections

⁹ Trust, experience, talent, scope of the work, and understanding the totality of your customer’s business

¹⁰ Focus on meeting project delivery objectives and leaving all business development, mentions potential opportunities, communicate and qualify the client need, pass them on to client sales, work with client sales to develop proposal, develop proposal and present to client

¹¹ A professional services mind set, the ability to clarify complex customer issues, skills in communicating the benefits of intangibles, insight on how to customize each solution, skills in compressing the sales cycle and how to commercialise the services sales promise, skills and capabilities today and need to acquire in the future

¹² Customer, consistency, creativity, culture, communication and change

¹³ Fitting the performance specifications, adequate resources, minimal interference, consequence management, and quality feedback

¹⁴ Return On Investment

¹⁵ Rationalization, cost cutting, labour management and cost effectiveness

¹⁶ Research and Development

¹⁷ Quality of infrastructure and technology, economic and labour policy and availability of capital

¹⁸ Strategic Cost Management

¹⁹ Unit-based drivers, allocation-intensive, narrow and rigid product costing, managing costs, little activity information, maximization of individual unit performance, using financial measures of performance, internal orientation and short-term perspective, strategic cost management

²⁰ Unit and non-unit-based drivers, tracing-intensive, broad product costing, managing activities, detailed activity information, system-wide performance maximization, using of both financial and non-financial measures of performance, both internal and external orientation and long-term perspective

²¹ Increase revenues, improve productivity and customer satisfaction and advance strategic position

²² Low profit margins, low customer loyalty and low first move advantages

²³ Product Life Cycles

²⁴ Long-term anticipation and formation of costs level, costs structure, and costs behaviour pattern for products, processes, and recourses for attaining a strategic competitive advantage

²⁵ Economics of scale, learning curve, experience and so on

²⁶ R&D

²⁷ Cost leadership, differentiation and focus

²⁸ Total Allowable Catch

²⁹ Regulated Open Access

³⁰ First Come-First Served

³¹ Individual Transferable Quota

³² Quota lease and sale prices and fishing output and input prices, ecological variability and market interest rates

³³ Total Allowable Catches

³⁴ European Commission

³⁵ Woodstock, Mossel Bay, Port Elizabeth, Hermanus and Gansbaai

³⁶ Par-fried, coated, sauce-filled portions, and co-extruded products, smoked fish and fishmeal products, hake fillets and portions, frozen fish sticks, frozen vegetables and fruits, frozen beef burgers, chicken and red meat products, and fish fingers; and individually wrapped hake loins, steaks or fillets

³⁷ Businessweek 2

³⁸ Marine & Coastal Management

³⁹ National Marine Day

⁴⁰ Schools, libraries and environmental organisations throughout the country

⁴¹ Department of Environmental Affairs & Tourism

⁴² Environmentalists, libraries, schools and government offices

⁴³ Wildlife & Environment Society

⁴⁴ Micro, Small, Medium, Large and Very Large

⁴⁵ The Marine and Coastal Management

⁴⁶ Department of Environmental Affairs

⁴⁷ Marine Living Resources

⁴⁸ St Joseph sharks, hottentot, snoek, harders and bakkies like small dinghies with outboard motors

⁴⁹ Fishing and Mariculture Development Association

⁵⁰ Total Allowable Effort

⁵¹ Management Services Costs

Entering the international market is always associated with several risks due to the relatively high costs of launching a company’s project in another country. The first risk associated with a fishing boat company entering the Indian market is dependence on suppliers of used plastics in the region. Entering the market now requires more investment and pricing for new materials, which must be adapted to the company’s cutting-edge development of a foldable boat. The second risk, in this case, is associated with the high price of these products, which may increase due to the need for environmental refinement and deployment of production in the country. The average income of a worker in India is approximately $130 per month, which is not even close to the cost of a boat, which may increase (Gowsalya et al., 2020). The company must either reconsider its pricing policy or look for buyers in the most affluent areas with access to water.

The strength of the American company lies in the innovative and flexible approach to creating products that withstand the tests and criticism of the target audience before entering the market. The second strength is the emphasis on sustainable development as the main criterion for the company’s sustainability and the environment. The ability to provide jobs in an industry vital to the country’s GDP while recycling plastic waste will create significant brand strength for the company, which in the future may be able to count on subsidies from government agencies.

The weak side of the company with this approach to creating products is the high resource cost in the early stages of each project. If the company’s financial performance is strong enough to withstand the test of entering a new continent with the adaptation of technological processes, then the consequences of this weakness are leveled. In other cases, with an unfortunate set of circumstances and high risks, there is a chance of project failure precisely in terms of the cost-benefit ratio. The second weakness of the company is the lack of international experience and, as a result, the need to consider external political, social, economic, and legal factors that may overtake the company, in addition to environmental and technological issues that have already affected the project.

The company’s ability lies in entering the international arena, and the Indian market favors this most. The country’s large population, the focus on fishing activities, which account for 7% of total world exports, and the agreement reached with the National Council for the Development of Fisheries are critical factors in the positive dynamics of this opportunity. In addition, the acquired technology for developing a boat made from recycled plastic can then be used in a product line in America, where trends in need to comply with environmental responsibility affect the organization’s image and drive sales (Gu, 2021). The company will be able to gain a reputation for innovation and being environmentally friendly.

Threats are the presence of cheaper analogs, sales of which will remain at the same level due to the high price of a new product. The second threat involves the safety of the operation of this boat for the most junior and senior representatives of the target audience. These products must also be tested for comfort and ergonomics and for various extreme situations that may be associated with the specific conditions of Indian fishing.

In this regard, as a strategic recommendation, it is proposed that the company use the experience of recycling used plastic to decrease the expenses for product materials in the whole supply chain. The second recommendation is to diversify the product line of boats into cheaper and more affordable options that are smaller or lack certain ergonomic features. The purchasing power of the target audience in India is relatively low; therefore, it is necessary to adapt to external factors, especially since high sales are a critical factor in the success of this project.

References

Gowsalya, T., Kanaga, V., & Faizullah, M. M. (2020). Analysis of fish production status and marketing structure in aliyar reservoir, Tamil Nadu. Indian Journal of Animal Research, 54(9), 1159-1164. Web.

Gu, J. (2021). Spatial dynamics between firm sales and environmental responsibility: The mediating role of corporate innovation. Sustainability, 13(4), 1684.