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Are Small-scale Fishers in Oman Technically Efficient? The Case of Al-Batinah Coastal Fisheries
Full text linkThis paper examines technical efficiency and the potential factors affecting it in small-scale harvesting operations involving five key commercial demersal species of Al Batinah coastal fisheries, Oman. A stochastic production frontier (SPF) approach was applied to a pooled data covering the period 2010-2016. There is strong evidence of a considerable extent of technical inefficiency and overutilization of fishing effort (fishing hours). The results from the technical inefficiency model suggested that geographical location and interannual fluctuation of stock were significantly affecting fishers’ efficiency. Finally, the empirical results are discussed along with policy implications and the suitability of the Stochastic Production Frontier (SPF) approach to technical efficiency analysis in small-scale fisheries
Ocean Activists Planning to “Flood” the Nation’s Capital Next Week
No full textHundreds of citizens will fan out across the nation’s capital next week to meet with lawmakers in what’s projected to be the largest ocean lobby effort in US history
Charting a Sustainable Course for the Blue Economy
No full textOcean industries are often even more polluting than their terrestrial counterparts
CBE Waves Newsletter: March 2021
Full text linkBROAD CITIZEN LOBBY to PROMOTE OCEAN CLIMATE ACTION; WRITING WORKSHOP for OCEAN AND CLIMATE ADVOCACY; OCEANS IN NATIONAL INCOME ACCOUNTS 5th. Intl. Symposium Wednesday-Thursday, March 24-25, 2021; HOW THE BLUE ECONOMY can HELP SOLVE the CLIMATE CRISIS; OPTIONS for SEA LEVEL RISE ADAPTATION on WEST CLIFF DRIVE; ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND SUSTAINABILITY SPRING LECTURES & FILM EVENT
Ocean Climate Policy: Building the Blue Economy in the Twenty-First Century
No full textThe global effort to create a blue economy – the creation of wealth from the oceans including the maintenance and growth of wealth from environmental and ecosystem resources – will be severely disrupted by climate change. Existing ocean industries will have to adapt to rising sea levels, warming, and ocean acidification. Attempts to repair damages to ecosystems from past activity will be made more difficult by shifting baselines. Beyond adaptation, ocean economic activity must participate in the global effort to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But climate change will also bring some new opportunities for economic growth, including technological innovation and the opening of the Arctic. The policy responses to climate change’s effects on the blue economy will be dictated by a complex mix of global and local actions. Climate change’s effects are likely to cause disruptions that occur faster than existing institutions are designed to handle, necessitating organizational changes as a prerequisite to effective action. Information needs will escalate dramatically in the fields of physical, biological, and social systems and the interactions among these systems. There will also be a tendency to concentrate on local scale actions for adaptation, but if mitigation of climate change is not successful, most of the adaptation actions will prove temporary
Eelgrass Restoration in San Francisco Bay: An Interdisciplinary Stated Preference Classroom Experiment
Full text linkThis paper aims to integrate experiential, interdisciplinary approaches into environmental economics courses through a stated preference analysis for eelgrass beds harboring aquatic plants foundational to many estuaries and coastal zones. It argues that such approaches are necessary in undergraduate education to support real-world needs in oceans and climate policy. Through collaboration with ecologists and peers, students developed willingness-to-pay measures of 42 for a 10-year restoration program for 200 acres of eelgrass (Zostera marina) in the San Francisco Bay based on open- and closed-ended elicitation formats. The experiment provides an example of overcoming the challenge of orienting students and stated preference survey respondents to a complex marine environment and meets conventional economic learning objectives
California Coastal Recreation: Beyond the Beach
Full text linkCalifornia is known throughout the state, nation, and world for its beaches, but the California coast provides so much more in recreational opportunities than just a day at the beach. However, if one were to ask: “How many people actually visit the coast for recreation”, the answer is “No one really knows”.
The reason is simple. No one asks this question on a regular basis. Extensive monitoring of the physical conditions of the coast and coastal waters takes place but nothing remotely comparable is done to track the millions of people who come to the coast.
Because there is no systematic, regular assessment of coastal recreation in California it is difficult to make decisions about current and future uses of the coast. These decisions include addressing such questions of how much of the coast to set aside for conservation purposes. California has an extensive network of Marine Protected Areas in addition to federal and local conserved lands and waters. Perhaps even more critically, climate change will alter the physical dimensions of the California coast in ways that may dramatically alter future human uses. Without a baseline, the impact of these changes on visitation can never be known.
This study is an effort to compile a picture of the uses and users of the California coast for recreation based on available information. It synthesizes estimates compiled from a variety of sources including past studies of recreation, data from public agencies, and many other sources. The focus of the report is on the recreational uses “beyond the beach” in order to emphasize the wide variety of uses across the length of the coast. The data covers different periods and different geographies and so is not always comparable across time and places, making summary measures difficult. Included in the report are recommendations for improving the measurement of coastal recreation.
Principal conclusions of the report include:
• Over 50% of the California population likely visits the coast for recreation ever year.
• By far the most important form of recreation on the California coast is simply experiencing the coast whether from locations on land or in a boat
• The most popular uses of the coast are nonconsumptive uses, including not only beach going, but also recreation classified as “active”, such as swimming or boating, and recreation classified as “passive” such as scenic drives and photography.
• Southern California accounts for most coastal recreation if beaches are included, but Central and Northern California account for most non-beach uses and nonconsumptive uses.
• While State Beaches are quite popular, State Parks, which contain many different shoreline types in addition to beaches are more popular.
• We know, with reasonable accuracy, how many boats people own and where they are docked or moored, but boating activity is not tracked regularly. This is true both for self-owned boats and for hired boats, whether rentals and charters, dinner cruises in the harbor, or nature viewing boat trips.
• The highways with coastal views, in particular California’s Highway 1, are a very important asset whether the sightseeing is a principal or an incidental purpose of a trip.
• Methods to expand data collection and improve precision of estimates are available that can greatly improve understanding of recreational uses, and which can be implemented at modest cost. Implementing these approaches and expanding the knowledge base of how many people use the coast for recreation, who the people are, and what they do for recreation is essential to the sustainable use of California’s coast
Economic Impacts of Coastal Hazards on Mississippi Commercial Oyster Fishery from 2005 to 2016
Full text linkThis paper attempted to quantify the commercial fishery impacts consisting of wild harvest losses of oysters by commercial Mississippi fishers due to coastal hazards since 2005. The economic impacts of coastal hazards on the Mississippi oyster fishery included the direct losses associated with Katrina in 2005, the oil spill in 2010, spillway opening in 2011 and harmful algal blooms in 2015. The cumulative economic direct impacts on the Mississippi oyster reached almost 3.3 million per year. Long-term data were compiled to develop economic recovery models for the Mississippi oyster fishery. The economic recovery model attempted to explain the individual and joint effects of the recent coastal hazards, output and input markets, environmental conditions, and regulatory and management strategies on the levels of commercial oyster harvests and dockside values. The commercial fishery impacts of Hurricane Katrina and harmful algal blooms were isolated from the total impacts. The impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Bonnet Carre spillway opening were not completely isolated in one year to avoid multicollinearity problems in estimation. The oyster relaying and cultch planting activities generated significant positive impacts on dockside values. As a result of these hazardous coastal events, the Mississippi oyster fishery cannot rely on its own to recover without management intervention and alternative production systems
Central Coast Highway 1 Climate Resiliency Study
No full textElkhorn Slough is a major estuary located in Monterey Bay, California that provides valuable habitat area for hundreds of aquatic bird, fish, marine mammal and invertebrate species. With nearly 2,700 acres of a suite of intact habitat types, the Slough is critical to regional biodiversity. Tidal estuarine habitats within the Slough and the ecosystem services they provide are at risk to substantial degradation and losses from sea level rise. With Central California already having lost over 90% of its historical estuarine marsh habitat area (Brophy et al. 2019), every effort is needed to maintain current marsh habitat area in the face of sea level rise. Presently, Elkhorn Slough holds the third largest extent of estuarine marsh in California and is well conserved. However, largely due to the surrounding steep topography, approximately 85% of this marsh is projected to be degraded or converted to tidal flats or open water with sea level rise without concerted restoration and conservation efforts. As sea levels rise, each acre of salt marsh now becomes that much more important to conserve or restore. Ensuring that Elkhorn Slough will perpetually host healthy salt marshes into the future is a high priority for the region (Fountain et al. 2020). Transportation assets in this region are also vulnerable to sea level rise impacts. The eight-mile stretch of Highway 1 through Elkhorn Slough is a critical transportation asset for the region and beyond. It provides local access to Moss Landing, is essential to freight movement and the economy, and is a major commuting route connecting two regionally important cities, Santa Cruz and Monterey. With 2 feet of sea level rise, major disruptions to Highway 1 transportation function are anticipated. The railway, which runs along the main stem of the Slough for five miles, is also critical to freight movement and envisioned to serve expanded passenger service to meet the needs of a growing population. Extreme tides, known as “King Tides” already cause periodic flooding and disruptions to the railway, which will increase in frequency and severity as sea levels rise. Maintaining or enhancing both transportation function and the extent of estuarine marsh in Elkhorn Slough are important priorities for the Central Coast and beyond. The Central Coast Highway 1 Climate Resiliency Study (Study) is a unique partnership between the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG), California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the Center for the Blue Economy (CBE) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and Environmental Science Associates (ESA) to develop and evaluate adaptation strategies for Highway 1 and the railway to improve resilience of transportation infrastructure in a manner that most benefits the surrounding ecosystems throughout Elkhorn Slough.
Integrating regional development and adoption of natural infrastructure and transportation planning can provide better outcomes for both sectors (Marcucci & Jordan, 2013) and Federal Highway Administration guidance and California policy are encouraging this integrated approach (Safeguarding California Plan: 2018 Update, 2018). The project was funded by Caltrans via a Senate Bill (SB) 1 Adaptation Planning grant, a Sustainable Communities Planning grant, with additional funding provided by AMBAG, TNC and the CBE
How Are Tourists Affected By Offshore Wind Turbines? A Case Study Of The First U.S. Offshore Wind Farm
Full text linkThis paper examines the impact of the construction of United States’ first offshore wind farm off the coast of Block Island on tourism, the largest revenue generator for the island. Using a stated preference survey, we find no negative impact on the number of trips taken by tourists since their construction. We also examine the determinants of tourists’ willingness to pay for different recreational activities on Block Island, both with and without the presence of turbines. We find evidence that prior awareness of wind turbines results in an overall improvement in welfare by approximately 20 million USD in tourism-generated revenue. Repeat visitors and respondents with prior knowledge of the turbines are willing to pay more, on average, for locations with a view of the turbines across all activities