Quotas, marine reserves and fishing the line. When does marine reserve creation pay?

Abstract

This paper explores the issue of using marine reserves in combination with quotas as fisheries management tools using a patchy environment model as the biological foundation. The rent generated by fishing on the total population, using optimal quotas as a management tool, is compared to the rent from the fishery when managed with quotas and a marine reserve. This is done under different assumptions regarding the type of dispersal mechanisms between the sub-populations in the different patches and under two different assumptions regarding the harvest function. It is shown that the profitability of reserve creation depends on the migration rate relative to the intrinsic growth rate and the cost / price ratio and that the choice of harvesting function is of particular importance when the costs of fishing are high.