Diversity of fishing strategies and high spatial adaptivity in the Alaskan snow crab fishery

Abstract

Abstract Fishing behavior is an important link between management decisions and bioeconomic outcomes. The diversity in fishers’ behavior, motivations, and abilities should inform incentive structures if management aims to consider heterogeneous impacts on and by communities. Modeling human behavior in resource management is important for successful fisheries, especially for fisheries undergoing rapid transformation, such as the Alaskan snow crab fishery. This study modeled how snow crabbers choose where to fish in the eastern Bering Sea and examined the diversity of strategies among individuals by fitting a random utility model to data on fishing locations using a variety of potential drivers of behavior as covariates. The overall fishing strategy of the snow crab fleet prioritizes revenue and shared information, while avoiding risk, poor weather, and cost. Diversity of fishing strategies was driven by differences in spatial footprint, vessel size, and ports of landing. Larger vessels ventured farther north, where weather conditions are more extreme. Despite differences in vessel size, crabbers were spatially adaptive and switched fishing regions depending on the abundance and distribution of crab. These findings on the patterns of fishing strategies can inform better management of the Alaskan snow crab fishery as it undergoes rebuilding.