Uncertainty, search, and information in fisheries

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Abstract
We consider the problem of modelling uncertainty in the location of schools of fish and the effect of search by fishing vessels in reducing the uncertainty. Our methods involve a preliminary period of searching and fishing, followed by a Bayesian update of information and a reallocation of vessels. The first search problem that we study is how to determine the optimal allocation of search effort over several historical fishing grounds, in which the current abundance of fish has a known prior probability distribution. In our second application, we consider the case of a single fishing ground and determine the optimal allocation of search effort over time. We assume that fishermen are profit maximizers (although this can be relaxed) and compare the value of competitive fishing strategies with cooperative ones in which search effort is optimized.

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