Assessment of Hong Kong shark fin market: Implication for fishery management

International exports of fishery products increased from 23.99 million metric tons (mt) in 1981 to 47.55 million mt in 1995, an increase of almost 96%. As a result of this increase, important issues arise. First, information concerning product distribution and flow, end-user preferences, pricing, processing and fishery technology are needed to ensure the success of seafood marketing in domestic and international markets. Second, from a fishery management perspective, managers and resource users can incorporate timely market information into their analyses to attain the objective of maximizing net economic yield of the resource. This research uses the Hong Kong shark fin market as a case study to address the above issues. First, a market preference study of dried-processed shark fins in Hong Kong was conducted to determine which product characteristics end-users favor. Three methods were employed: self-explicated utility study, conjoint analysis, and hedonic price analysis. The results of the hedonic price analysis and conjoint analysis were then integrated independently with the growth functions of the blacktip shark Carcharhinus limbatus to develop two market preference--cohort models. The optimal harvest size and age of the blacktip cohort, that maximize gross revenue, were investigated for both models. Results from the hedonic price analysis and conjoint experiment indicated that larger size fins were significantly preferred to smaller sized fins. Regarding the types of fins, results from the conjoint experiment showed that the caudal fin was preferred to dorsal; and the dorsal fin was significantly preferred to pectoral. Hedonic price analysis also showed that the caudal fin was significantly preferred to dorsal and pectoral fins. These results were generally in agreement with the self-explicated utility measure. Maximizing the gross revenue of a single cohort of blacktip shark, Carcharhinus limbatus, under all natural mortality and discount rate scenarios showed that the optimal harvest size and age for the conjoint market--cohort model was larger (older) than the hedonic market--cohort model. This difference can be attributed to the assumption of the different management objectives and the functional forms used for the two models.