BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN ECONOMIC THEORY AND FISHERIES MANAGEMENT - A CASE STUDY OF THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN SNAPPER FISHERY

In South Australia, commercial and recreational fishers compete to catch Snapper from a single stock. To distribute this resource appropriately, the widely accepted conceptual framework for optimizing the net benefits from resource allocation is applied. That is, by finding the point at which the marginal net economic values of the recreational and commercial sectors are equal, the optimal allocation between the competing users can be found. Research results indicate that given certain assumptions, the net economic benefits from Snapper fishing in SA could be increased if catch was reallocated from the commercial to the recreational sector. The sensitivity analysis carried out on the results demonstrated little change due to the shortfall between the marginal commercial economic benefit curve and the estimated recreational marginal willingness to pay