Technological change and fisheries sustainability: The point of view of Adaptive Dynamics

The analysis of a simple model shows that exploitation of fish stocks can entrain in the long run the substantial decline or even the collapse of the stock, as well as difficulties in stock recovery, loss of fishery resilience, and reduction of the mean fish size. The results are in agreement with numerous observations, even though they are obtained with a simple model in which the harvesting fleet and the fish stock are considered as unstructured predator and prey. The study is carried out for the typical case of fleet dimension not too sensitive to the year-to-year fluctuations of the stock and assuming that the sole cause of evolution is technological innovation. The analysis is performed by means of Adaptive Dynamics, an approach born in theoretical biology which is used here in the context of technological change. Although the results are qualitatively consistent with those obtained long ago through the principles of bioeconomics, it is fair to stress that the underlying assumptions are different. In fact, in the bioeconomic approach fleet technology does not evolve and fishing effort varies to produce economic optimization, while in the Adaptive Dynamics approach technological innovation is the key driver. The paper is purely theoretical and the proposed model can hardly be tuned on any real fishery. No practical guidelines for managers can therefore be drawn, if not the general conclusion that long-term sustainability of exploited fish stocks can only be achieved if strategic parameters influencing technological change are kept under strict control.