Competitive versus sustainable outcomes of anchovies in gulf of Thailand for Thailand's fishery industry

Abstract

The competition between artisanal and commercial fishery poses serious international economic problems. An important problem is the determination of sustainable fishing amounts for each group, i.e. artisanal and commercial. In this study, the determination of appropriable fishing amount is achieved using the framework of game theory. More specifically, the solution is determined based on Nash equilibrium. The Gordon-Schaefer harvest production function, which characterizes sustainable fishery levels, is considered. The secondary data from Thailand's Department of Fisheries, is used in the empirical study. For the estimation of the sustainable outcomes, for the artisanal fishery, the optimal effort ranges from 2,487,228 to 65,925,713 fishing days per year per all artisanal boats in 2017 and ranges from 2,794,208 to 74,229,479 fishing days per year per all artisanal boats in 2018. For the commercial fishery, the optimal effort ranges from 31,517 to 787,931 fishing days per year per all commercial boats in 2017 and ranges from 36,261 to 906,533 fishing days per year per all commercial boats in 2018. As the fishing effort in competitive outcome (MSY) was 171,378 days in 2017 and 172,880 days in 2018, this indicates that both of artisanal and commercial fisheries in Thailand did not exceed the limit.