FISHERIES SUCCESS AND FAILURE: THE CASE OF THE BRISTOL BAY SALMON FISHERY

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE, 78(3): 487 498, 2006 MOTE SYMPOSIUM INVITED PAPER FISHERIES SUCCESS AND FAILURE: THE CASE OF THE BRISTOL BAY SALMON FISHERY Ray Hilborn ABSTRACT Many of Alaska s salmon fisheries are models of biological success, with management structures that have maintained biomass, stock diversity, and biological yield. At the same time the fisheries face severe challenges due to low product price, and have been declared formal economic disasters by state and federal agencies in recent years. From many perspectives, these fisheries are in crisis. I explore how the governance system for Alaska s Bristol Bay fishery has led to biological success and economic failure. I review a range of alternative governance structures, in place or being considered, that might provide for social and economic sustainability. I also demonstrate that the basic biological principal that has guided management, maximum sustainable yield, is a serious impediment to social and economic sustainability. Alaskan salmon was the second fishery in the world to be certified by the Marine Stewardship Council as well managed (Phillips et al., 2003) and the Bristol Bay salmon fishery, primarily for sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka Walbaum, 1792), is often cited as a success story in fisheries management (Hilborn et al., 2003a). In the last 20 yrs the total return, spawning stock, and catch have been at record levels, but the fishery is in severe economic stress. Because revenues are down dramatically, many boats cannot operate at a profit and have ceased operation, many processors have consolidated or sold out, and revenues to local communities from fishing are greatly reduced (Link et al., 2003). Here I explore the dimensions of the biological success and the economic failure and suggest reasons for the contrast. The Biological Success The geographic setting for Bristol Bay and its major rivers and lakes are shown in Figure 1. The Bristol Bay commercial sockeye fishery developed at the end of the 19th century as salmon canning spread north from its origins in the San Francisco area. By 1912, 19 canneries and 1083 sail-powered gillnet boats harvested and canned over 20 million salmon annually. The fishery has seen fluctuations in total return and harvest (Fig. 2), but since the late 1970s catch, spawning stock, and total return have been at record levels. The traditional measure of biological management success is the number of fish spawning, and the strong catches in Bristol Bay have been matched by strong spawning stocks. Almost all Bristol Bay fish swim up nine key rivers (Kvichak, Egegik, Naknek, Wood, Ugashik, Igushik, Alagnak, Nushagak, and Togiak) and are monitored by counting towers instituted in the 1950s. Because the river systems are clear and slow moving, the fish can be counted as they pass upstream close to the riverbanks. Unlike those of most marine fishes, the spawning stock can therefore be reliably estimated and has increased considerably in the last 30 yrs. The fishery managers of Bristol Bay have consciously avoided differential exploitation of components of the run, both in space and in time, so concern about substock Bulletin of Marine Science 2006 Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science of the University of Miami 487

488 BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE, VOL. 78, NO. 3, 2006 Figure 1. A map of Bristol Bay and its major rivers and lakes. erosion is low (Hilborn et al., 2003b). Concern has been raised that the removal of a large portion of the returning salmon has reduced ecosystem productivity in ecosystems dominated by Pacific salmon (Naiman et al., 2002), but paleoecological analysis of returns to Bristol Bay show no indication of decreased production since commercial exploitation began (Schindler et al., 2005). One key to understanding the increased production since the late 1970s is the total adult return in a cohort divided by the number of parental spawners. This ratio is called the recruits per spawner (RPS) and reflects the product of fecundity and survival. Figure 3 shows the history of RPS for the major river systems in Bristol Bay. Before the late 1970s, the systems averaged about two recruits per spawner, but then several systems, particularly Egegik and Ugashik, saw a major increase in RPS. This change is widely ascribed to climate impacts associated with the Pacific decadal oscillation (Hare and Francis, 1995; Adkison et al., 1996; Mantua et al., 1997; Peterman et al., 1998; Adkison and Finney, 2003), and the increase in RPS was due unquestionably to environmental changes rather than any management action. Also of significant interest is the poor productivity in recent years of the Kvichak run, which has not even been replacing itself (RPS < 1) in the last decade. A cornerstone of the Alaska salmon management system is the escapement goal (Eggers, 1992; Schelle, 2004). For each fishing district an escapement goal range is calculated from analysis of historical spawner-recruit data to maximize long-term sustainable yield (MSY). The in-season management system is designed to regulate harvest to assure that the escapement is within the desired range (Eggers, 1992). Adjustment is made on a daily basis; fishery managers open and close fisheries to regulate harvest so that the escapement goal is reached. Ideally the harvest is applied smoothly throughout so that fishing impacts are evenly spread over early- and laterun stock components. Bristol Bay fisheries are regulated by three district managers, one for the Ugashik and Egegik rivers; one for the Kvichak, Naknek, and Alagnak rivers on the east side

HILBORN: SUCCESS AND FAILURE: BRISTOL BAY SALMON 489 Figure 2. Catch history of Bristol Bay sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka). Horizontal black lines show average catch for the two recent periods of the low and high production associated with ocean climate shifts known as the Pacific decadal oscillation. of the bay; and one for the Nushagak, Wood, Igushik, and Togiak rivers on the bay s west side. All three managers have clear instructions that their job for the fishing season is to regulate the fishery to fall within the escapement goal. If the total return for the district is less than the escapement goal then the ideal catch will be zero; if the run is large, then the catch should ideally be regulated so that the escapement remains within the specified range and the remaining fish are harvested. Figure 4 shows the history of catch and escapement for the major fishing districts, demonstrating reasonably constant escapements for most systems in the last 20 yrs. The management structure of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) complements the escapement-goal system. By making an individual responsible for each fishing district, ADF&G provides strong incentives to stay within escapement goals because everyone knows who is in charge and who deserves credit or blame. During the fishing season district managers spend a good portion of each day meeting with vessel owners and processors. When mistakes are made it is clear where the error originated. I hypothesize that the good biological track record for Bristol Bay arises from four factors: (1) a clear objective of maximum sustainable yield; (2) the escapement-goal system, which assures maintenance of the biological productive capacity; (3) management by a single agency with clear objectives and direct line responsibility; and (4) good luck in the form of lack of habitat loss and good ocean conditions since the late 1970s.

490 BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE, VOL. 78, NO. 3, 2006 Figure 3. Trends in salmon recruits per spawner for major Bristol Bay fishing districts. Note that y axis on all graphs is logarithmic. Dashed lines show values of 1.0 and 5.0 to aid comparison between graphs and highlight the lack of replacement in the Kvichak in recent years. The Economic Failure The Bristol Bay fishery consists of 1866 drift-net permits (gillnet boats), limited to 32 ft in length and 150 fathoms of net, and 1100 set-net permits. Set nets must be anchored to the shore and fished by small rowboats or just cleaned on low tides. On average, the drift-net fleet gets 88% of the catch, the set net fishery 12%. Subsistence and recreational fishing for sockeye are also important, but the numbers of fish caught are small compared to those in the commercial catch. Figure 5 shows the recent history of landed values in the fishery. The decline in landed value in the most recent years is due to a combination of declining price and lower catches. Figure 6 shows the trend in prices, which have declined from an average of close to $1.50 per pound to $0.40 per pound in recent years. The overall impact of the change in prices and value on the fishing fleet has been dramatic. Whereas average economic profit for drift-net vessels from 1982 to 1996 was between $13,000 and $47,000, the fishery now operates at a net loss (Schelle, 2004), with negative average profit for all years between 1997 and 2003 except 1999.

HILBORN: SUCCESS AND FAILURE: BRISTOL BAY SALMON 491 Figure 4. Stacked bar graph of catch and escapement trends for the major Bristol Bay salmon stocks. The light area is escapement; dark area is catch. Link et al. (2003) reported that in 2001 permit holders averaged $4000 in income after operating costs, but before debt service on permits and vessels. The low value of the Bristol Bay catch is primarily driven by the decline in price caused by expanded production of farmed salmon (Bjorndal et al., 2003), but the fishery is also plagued by other factors that drive costs up, including (1) a very short fishing season, (2) very high volumes of fish, (3) distance from markets and suppliers and associated high transportation costs, and (4) high tides that prevent fisherman from delivering directly to processing plants (Link et al., 2003; Schelle, 2004). The Bristol Bay sockeye run is one of the most compressed sockeye runs in the world; most of the catch occurs during 2 wks from late June to mid-july. The standing capital of harvesting and processing capacity per pound processed is therefore high compared to those of other salmon runs, which may last for several months, so the fixed costs of operating are very high. Closely related to this problem is the high volume of fish. Several million fish per day are sometimes caught, and individual vessels process thousands of fish per day. As a result, the quality of the fish during the harvest and transport is lower than that in fisheries where vessels catch a few hundred fish per day. Most Bristol Bay vessels do not have ice systems, and at periods of high volume the quality of fish suffers from lack of cooling.

492 BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE, VOL. 78, NO. 3, 2006 Figure 5. Landed values in Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fishery (from Link et al., 2003). Bristol Bay is the northernmost of major U.S. commercial salmon fisheries, and has no road transport; all materials must arrive either by barge or by air. Harvesting and processing in Bristol Bay are therefore at an economic disadvantage compared to other salmon fisheries in the U.S. and Canada. Finally, Bristol Bay is subject to significant tides so shore-based plants can only be reached at high tides. Fishing vessels therefore cannot deliver directly to shore-based plants and must employ tenders. Tendering costs in Bristol Bay are estimated to be about $0.17 per pound (Link et al., 2003). When prices were high, the high costs of operating in Bristol Bay were offset by high volume and the fishery was highly profitable. With the decline in prices, the current economic model of the fishery has ceased to be economically viable. A wide range of alternatives is under consideration, including vessel buy-back, alternative harvesting methods, and reducing the race to fish by assigning harvest shares. In view of low prices and high fuel and transportation expenses, Bristol Bay could cease to be an economically viable fishery if the traditional methods of management and harvest are continued, but profitable harvesting and processing would doubtless be possible with a much smaller fleet, possibly other gears, and a harvest strategy that took a small but reasonably constant catch. Despite the long history of economic criticism of salmon fisheries (Crutchfield and Pontecorvo, 1969; Crutchfield, 1973) and the Bristol Bay fishery in particular (Herrmann et al., 2004), no one has ever questioned that, for maximum profit from salmon fisheries, much smaller fleets would be appropriate. In contrast to the biological management, no form of active economic management of the fishery is currently in place. The number of permits is regulated by the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission (CFEC), and the specifics of vessel size, length of net, etc. are adjusted by the Alaska Board of Fisheries. The CFEC has objectives, which are established in Alaska s limited-entry law: the number of entry permits

HILBORN: SUCCESS AND FAILURE: BRISTOL BAY SALMON 493 Figure 6. Price per pound paid to fishermen in Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fishery (from Link et al., 2003). sufficient to maintain an economically healthy fishery that will result in a reasonable average rate of economic return to the fishermen participating in the fishery, considering time fished and necessary investments in vessel and gear (Schelle, 2004). Although the original number of permits was designed to meet this objective, two successful lawsuits resulted in the granting of more permits in the 1970s, and the number of licenses has not been revised as economic times have changed. Within the fishing community, the relative importance of economic profitability, equity among individuals, and local ownership of fishing permits are debated (Link et al., 2003). The crisis in profitability has resulted in a reexamination of the appropriate number of permits, and Schelle (2004) has recommended that the number of permits be reduced to between 800 and 1200, but as yet no management mechanism is in place to change the number of permits except legislative funding of a buy-back. Economic problems in the fishery have been identified since 1997, when an unexpectedly small catch led the governor of Alaska to declare the Bristol Bay fishery an economic disaster. The following year was worse and earned both state and federal declarations of disaster. No one is charged with the economic health of the fishery in the same way that ADF&G is charged with the biological management. The economic crisis since 1997 has been addressed by only a few studies, and the most significant and far reaching (Link et al., 2003) was initiated not by state managers, but by the local economic-development corporation. The CFEC (Schelle, 2004) report can be viewed as active economic management except that the CFEC has no mechanism for reducing the number of permits and further has no authority to consider other forms of economic management considered by Link et al. (2003), such as alternative gears, harvest cooperatives, etc. The active economic management I envision is not year-to-year changes in number of permits, lengths of nets, etc., but rather designation of someone whose responsibility it is to consider alternative actions that might improve the economic performance of the fisheries, to report annually on the

494 BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE, VOL. 78, NO. 3, 2006 economic issues in the fishery, and at least to make proposals on how to improve economic performance. In principle, the Alaska Board of Fisheries is responsible for all aspects of the management of Alaskan fisheries, but no state agency analogous to ADF&G exists to bring economic management proposals to the Board of Fisheries, nor does the Board of Fisheries have staff members to do background work. The only significant change in Alaskan salmon management instituted since 1997 is the Chignik Cooperative, initiated at the request of local fishermen. When it comes to economic management of Alaskan fisheries, there is a vacuum in leadership and responsibility from state agencies. I therefore hypothesize that the economic failure of the Bristol Bay fishery is due to the converse of the factor leadings to biological success: (1) unclear economic objectives, (2) lack of direct agency responsibility for economic performance, and (3) bad luck. Solving the Economics The governance problems affecting the Alaskan salmon fisheries can be illustrated best by examination of possible solutions to the current economic crisis and how these solutions might be implemented. By governance I mean the laws, regulations, and institutions that directly affect the operations of the fishery; at present the Board of Fisheries and ADF&G have direct annual input to the management, whereas the CFEC has, as yet, not been an active decision maker. I address two broad approaches that are being discussed: changing the institutional structure of harvesting to reduce the fleet size, race for fish, and harvesting costs and modifying the harvest strategy to provide for economic rather than biological maximization. Institutional Changes. Link et al. (2003) identified a number of methods for improving the economic performance of the fishery, including (1) reducing fishing capacity, (2) spreading harvesting across time, (3) exploring alternative harvesting methods, (4) improving product quality, (4) marketing the harvest better, and (5) eliminating the race for fish by assigning shares of the harvest to participants. The responsibility for implementing these actions will be divided, under current legislation, among a variety of agencies. Reducing fishing capacity would almost certainly require legislative funding of a buy-back program, as proposed by Schelle (2004). Spreading harvest across time could be done by ADF&G, and in 2004 they did implement a new approach, called the general district, in which they allowed a small fraction of the catch to be taken earlier in the season before fish had started to accumulate in traditional fishing districts. This change allowed processing plants to begin operation earlier. Exploring alternative harvest methods (traps, purse seines, etc.) would almost certainly require action by the Board of Fisheries, which has the authority to change gear regulations. Marketing the harvest better has been an ongoing effort of the individual companies as well as the Alaska Salmon Marketing Institute. To eliminate the race for fish, the Board of Fisheries assigned harvest shares for the Chignik fishery, but this action has recently been ruled illegal by the Alaska Supreme Court. Any form of harvest cooperatives or harvest shares would therefore require legislative change.

HILBORN: SUCCESS AND FAILURE: BRISTOL BAY SALMON 495 Unlike the biological management, where the lines of authority and responsibility are clear, the economic management will require complex interaction of numerous state agencies and the legislature. The prospects for change are not good. What is critically lacking is responsibility. Whose job is it to identify alternative solutions, build consensus on the way forward, and move the system through the required institutional and legislative changes? The unfortunate answer is that no one has this responsibility, and the change will happen only when someone or some organization steps forward and takes it upon themselves in the way that individuals in Chignik did. Modification of Harvesting Strategey: Moving Beyond MSY. Although I argued earlier that managing for an escapement goal is one of the foundations of the biological success of the Bristol Bay fishery, here I wish to demonstrate that it is a serious impediment to economic success and that alternative harvest strategies could provide for significant improvement in the economic performance without threatening the biological success. A fixed escapement policy has been demonstrated to maximize long-term sustainable yield (Reed, 1979; Hilborn and Walters, 1992). Unfortunately, it also maximizes variability in catch because all of the year-to-year variability in numbers returning is imposed on the catch while, in theory, escapement is held constant. The high variability in catch is economically undesirable in salmon fisheries in general for a number of reasons, including that (1) years of high catch depress price and quality, (2) large fixed costs are associated with the processing capacity to harvest the occasional large catches and maintaining this high capacity does not pay when it is used infrequently, (3) the years of low catch that come from MSY management militate against maintaining the role of Bristol Bay sockeye in the marketplace. What the industry wants is stability of catch, yet the harvest strategy maximizes variability in catch. Eliminating the occasional large catches associated with MSY management has been suggested by others (Adkison and Finney, 2003) and may happen de facto as processors reduce their capacity, but MSY management has other negative aspects. Making sure the escapement reaches the minimum of the range is perhaps the highest priority for individual managers in Bristol Bay, so they are reluctant to allow significant fishing until they are certain they will be able to get an escapement above the minimum. Individual managers were therefore opposed to the general district fishery that took place in 2004 because they were concerned that in the event of a weak run they might catch fish that could have pushed them into the escapement goal range. When economic profitability is considered, the optimal harvest strategy would allow some fishing below the normal range of escapement goals for MSY management. The two likely differences between MSY and economic management are therefore not allowing very large catches and less concern about escapements falling below the MSY range. The negative impacts of MSY management are particularly problematic in Bristol Bay, where large returns lead to poorer quality, depress markets by high volume, and require very large processing capacity to deal with the occasional high returns. Although large catches are not much of a problem for the fishing fleet (its current size is more than adequate to catch 30 or even 40 million fish), processing plants in recent years have only had the capacity to handle smaller runs, and many of the larger canneries have been mothballed. Although the processors can still bring floating processing vessels into the bay to process large runs, this strategy requires reli-

496 BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE, VOL. 78, NO. 3, 2006 able preseason forecasts of catch, and the economics of added floating processors is closely tied to the need for these processors in the herring-roe and crab fisheries. The obvious modification in the harvest strategy would be not to attempt to maximize biological yield in years of large return and to let many fish swim upriver uncaught. This strategy would avoid the need for high processing capacity and associated fixed costs, it would avoid market depression due to very high volumes, and it would provide for ecosystem benefits in the form of increased escapements in years of high return. From a scientific perspective the obvious need is for calculation of the harvest strategy that maximizes economic return rather than biological return. Up to 2004, ADF&G has specifically confined its scientific work to calculating maximum biological return, arguing that it has no mandate to consider economics. This, again, is another area of economic concern that falls through the cracks between agency responsibilities. Discussion Here, I argue that the difference in success between the biological and economic aspects of the Bristol Bay fishery is due to differences in management strategy: specific biological objectives but conflicting economic objectives, clear lines of responsibility for biological management but no direct responsibility for economic management, and good luck with the biology but bad luck with the economics. This hypothesis could be tested by comparison of a wide range of fisheries and quantification of the economic and biological success, the clarity of objectives, the degree of direct institutional responsibility, and the components of chance. This comparison should be attempted. Almost all of the attributes I ascribe to Bristol Bay are shared by other Alaskan salmon fisheries, as the institutions and markets are the same or very similar. Throughout Alaska, salmon stocks are generally healthy and economic performance poor, supporting the hypotheses I put forward. Marine fisheries management in the U.S. is governed by regional fishery management councils and NOAA Fisheries. The clear difference between marine fisheries management and Alaskan salmon management is in direct responsibility. No one is individually responsible for marine fisheries management, and any credit or blame is spread among the council members as primary decision makers and NOAA as providers of scientific information. As NOAA Fisheries has taken a more direct hand in specifying biological objectives, however, and forcing strict overfishing definitions and rebuilding plans on the councils, we see a biological analog to the Bristol Bay salmon fishery, and the biological situation is generally improving around the country (NMFS, 2004). The poor economic performance of many U.S. marine fisheries is well recognized and a primary concern of many members of regional fishery management councils, but again individual responsibility is completely lacking. It is no one s job to find solutions to the economic problems plaguing most U.S. fisheries, namely overcapitalization, the race for fish, and discarding. For example, on the west coast of the U.S., discarding has long been identified as a problem caused by the current trip-limit system (Pikitch et al., 1988). This problem was solved in the very similar British Columbia fishery in 1996, when a system of 100% mandatory observer coverage and retention was imposed that required landing all fish above trip limits and put the revenue generated from those fish into a research

HILBORN: SUCCESS AND FAILURE: BRISTOL BAY SALMON 497 trust fund administered by the fishing industry (Turris, 1999). So far no similar solution has been implemented for the U.S. West Coast fishery, despite the advancement of many proposals for systems similar to that used in British Columbia. The reason is clearly that it has been no one s job to work such a proposal through the institutional obstacles. Here I put forward the hypothesis that clear objectives and institutional responsibility are important components in economic and biological success of fisheries, but one must never disregard the importance of chance. Napoleon is supposed to have said, Give me a lucky general, not a good one. Everything is to chance. Distinguishing what leads to success and failure will be made more difficult by the randomness of biology, markets, and costs of fishing. Acknowledgments This work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation award number 0308440 and Bristol Bay salmon processors. Comments from three anonymous reviewers were very helpful. Literature Cited Adkison, M. D., R. M. Peterman, M. F. Lapointe, D. M. Gillis, and J. Korman. 1996. Alternative models of climatic effects on sockeye salmon, Oncorhynchus nerka, productivity in Bristol Bay, Alaska, and the Fraser River, British Columbia. Fish. Oceanogr. 5: 137 152. and B. P. Finney. 2003. The long term outlook for salmon returns to Alaska. Alsk. Fish. Res. Bull. 10: 83 94. Bjorndal, K. A., G. Knapp, and A. Lem. 2003. Salmon, a study of global supply and demand. GLOBEFISH Res. Ser. Vol. 73. FAO GLOBEFISH Fishery Industries Division, Rome. 151 p. Crutchfield, J. A. 1973. Economic and political objectives in fishery management. Trans. Am. Fish. Soc. 102: 481 491. and G. Pontecorvo. 1969. The Pacific salmon fisheries: a study of irrational conservation. John Hopkins Press, Baltimore. 220 p. Eggers, D. M. 1992. The benefits and costs of the management program for natural sockeyesalmon stocks in Bristol Bay. Alsk. Fish. Res. 14: 159 177. Hare, S. R. and R. C. Francis. 1995. Climate change and salmon production in the northeast Pacific Ocean. Can. Spec. Publ. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 121: 357 372. Herrmann, M., J. Greenberg, C. Hamel, and H. Geier. 2004. Extending federal crop insurance programs to commercial fisheries: the case of Bristol Bay, Alaska, sockeye salmon. N. Am. J. Fish. Manage. 24: 352 366. Hilborn, R. and C. J. Walters. 1992. Quantitative fisheries stock assessment: choice, dynamics and uncertainty. Chapman and Hall, New York. 570 p., T. A. Branch, B. Ernst, A. Magnusson, C. V. Minte-Vera, M. D. Scheuerell, and J. L. Valero. 2003a. State of the world s fisheries. Ann. Rev. Environ. Res. 28: 359 399., T. P. Quinn, D. E. Schindler, and D. E. Rogers. 2003b. Biocomplexity and fisheries sustainability. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100: 6564 6568. Link, M. R., M. L. Hartley, S. A. Miller, B. Waldrop, J. Wilen, and A. Barnett. 2003. An analysis of options to restructure the Bristol Bay salmon fishery. Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation, Dillingham, Alaska. 116 p. Available from: http://www.bbsalmon.com/final- Report.pdf.

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