Designing and financing optimal enforcement for small-scale fisheries and dive tourism industries

Effective enforcement can reduce the impacts of illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing, resulting in numerous economic, ecological, and social benefits. However, resource managers in small-scale fisheries often lack the expertise and financial resources required to design and implement an effective enforcement system. Here, a bio-economic model is developed to investigate optimal levels of fishery enforcement and financing mechanisms available to recover costs of enforcement. The model is parameterized to represent a small-scale Caribbean lobster fishery, and optimal fishery enforcement levels for three different stakeholder archetypes are considered: (1) a fishing industry only; (2) a dive tourism industry only; and (3) fishing and dive tourism industries. For the illustrative small-scale fishery presented, the optimal level of fishery enforcement decreases with increasing levels of biomass, and is higher when a dive tourism industry is present. Results also indicate that costs of fisheries enforcement can be recovered through a suite of financing mechanisms. However, the timescale over which financing becomes sustainable will depend largely on the current status of the fishery resource. This study may serve as a framework that can be used by resource managers to help design and finance economically optimal fisheries enforcement systems.