Spatial employment impacts of fisheries management: A study of the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea fisheries

A multiregional Input–Output (I–O) model was developed to investigate the spatial distribution of employment impacts of different fisheries management regimes and policies. The geographic areas used for this study were the fisheries dependent regions in south west Norway and the three northern most counties where the availability of fish resources is of significant importance for settlement. This study focused on the economically most important fish species in the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea: cod, herring and capelin. A major problem confronting fishery managers is quota trade-offs among ecologically interdependent fish stocks. This article demonstrates that fishery management decisions regarding the different stocks may have significance for the spatial distribution of economic activities. The spatial implications of managers’ decisions are crucial for fisheries dependent communities, but such effects are often difficult to foresee due to lack of spatial modelling. The modelling approach demonstrated in this paper would mitigate would such problems.