The Efficacy of Stock Enhancement for Alleviating Inherent Short-Term Socioeconomic and Conservation Trade-Offs in Recreational Fisheries

At the core of fisheries management lie short term trade-offs between conserving fish populations and maximizing socioeconomic benefit, but systematic assessment of such tradeoffs is not common. We evaluated how trade-offs between wild fish conservation and the generation of socioeconomic benefits in recreational fisheries might be affected by stock enhancement.  To accomplish this we developed a simple bio-economic model representing a fishery considered for enhancement, Florida’s recreational red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) fishery. Contrary to common perceptions, stock enhancement generally did not alleviate the trade-offs between wild stock abundance and socioeconomic value. This result arose from biotic interactions between wild and hatchery fish and increases in fishing effort sustained by enhancement, both of which resulted in a reduction of wild population abundance.  Our work also showed how the conservation-socioeconomic trade-off shape itself could change with stakeholder opinions, and how the trade-off frontier associated with stock enhancement might be entirely eclipsed by alternative management strategies (e.g., habitat restoration, catch and release regulations), if they were acceptable to stakeholders.  These findings emphasize the need to incorporate public/stakeholder preferences into models of recreational fisheries, and illustrate how natural resource trade-offs and their outcomes may better understood using even simple quantitative models.