Modeling Recreational Catch and Dynamic Stock Adjustments: An Application to Commercial-Recreational Allocation

This paper is motivated by the commercial-recreational fishery allocation issue. A dynamic stock model is developed which includes aggregate recreational effort. Benefits for red drum anglers from hypothetical reallocation are estimated with RUM, and costs to the commercial sector are also estimated. We aggregate net benefits across sectors, and discount over the simulated stock adjustment periods (24-46 years, depending upon parameter estimates assumed). Net benefits depend crucially upon the rate of recreational catch and effort adjustment to growth in stock. Under one set of modeling alternatives, reallocation does not yield positive net benefits.