Measurement of Fishing Capacity of Offshore Fisheries in Korea

우리나라 근해어업의 어획능력 측정에 관한 연구

Reducing fishing capacity is one of current issues in the international fisheries. This is because that increased fishing capacity has caused not only fish stocks to be depleted, but also additional fishing costs to be incurred, which resulted in reduction of economically viability of fisheries. For this reason, FAO adopted the International Plan of Action for the Management of Fishing Capacity' in 1999 and recommended member countries to estimate fishing capacity and to implement the policy to reduce fishing capacity. This study is aimed to measure fishing capacity of the Large Purse Seines Fishery that is one of offshore fisheries in Korea using both Peak - to - Peak Analysis and Data Envelopment Analysis in order to provide a policy information for preparation of domestic plan of action for the management of fishing capacity. The results of PTP Analysis were almost similar to those of DEA Analysis. The DEA results showed that the capacity utilization in 2004 was about 75%, it was obvious the capacity did not utilize enough. The sensitivity analysis on DEA results indicated that 24% of the number of ships, 26% of the tonnages, or 29% of the horse powers should be reduced if the present catch remained. In addition, if the catch remains at the MSY base level of large purse seines, the analysis suggested that the number of ships, tonnages and horse powers should be reduced by 15%, 18%, and 21% respectively.