Trade-offs between socioeconomic and conservation management objectives in stock enhancement of marine recreational fisheries

We used an integrated bio-economic model to explore the nature of tradeoffs between conservation of fisheries resources and their use for socioeconomic benefit, as realized through the stock enhancement of recreational fisheries. The model explicitly accounted for the dynamics of wild, stocked, and naturally recruited hatchery-type fish population components, angler responses to stocking, and alternative functional relationships that defined conservation and socioeconomic objectives. The model was set up to represent Florida's red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) fishery as a case study. Stock enhancement produced strong trade-offs characterized by frontiers indicating that maximizing socioeconomic objectives could only be achieved at great losses to conservation objectives when the latter were based exclusively on abundance of wild-type fish. When naturally recruited hatchery-type fish were considered equivalent to wild fish in conservation value, this tradeoff was alleviated. Frontier shapes were sensitive to alternative assumptions regarding how conservation objectives were formulated, differential harvesting of stocked and wild-type fish, and potential inherent stakeholder satisfaction from the act of stocking. These findings make more explicit the likely opportunity costs associated with recreational stock enhancement and highlight the utility of trade-off frontiers for evaluating management actions.