Fishery resource recovery strategy without reducing the number of landings: A case study of the ocellate puffer in Japan

This study proposes a new fishery resource recovery strategy and empirically examines its feasibility. The proposed strategy is unique because it may help fishermen recover fishery resources by closing for the first several months of the fishing season without decreasing their average annual landings. If demand is elastic, it is feasible that they could recover biomass without reducing average annual revenue. To demonstrate the validity of this strategy, this study empirically examines the ocellate puffer in the vicinity of Japan, as it has experienced a drastic depletion of biomass. The results indicate that if fishing were to be prohibited, for example, between October and February (current fishing season is between October and March), ocellate puffer recovery in the first year would be 30,453 kg, which would have the same effect as an 18.4% reduction in the current average landings. The price elasticity for ocellate puffer is elastic, which implies not only that fishery revenue would not decrease, but that the strategy could be a promising means of recovering ocellate puffer stocks.