Economics of fisheries management of straddling fish stocks in the Patagonian Marine Ecosystem

The Patagonian Marine Ecosystem (PME) is one of the most productive ecosystems in the world, with important commercial straddling stocks such as the Argentine short-fin squid, the common squid, the Argentine hake, the southern blue whiting and the Patagonian toothfish. These resources are exploited by different foreign fleets that operate both within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Argentina and within the adjacent area beyond the 200-limit. Nevertheless, little research has been done on economic and implications of this fishery from the fisheries management perspective. Hence, exploring cooperative fisheries management scenarios in this area aimed at restoring fish populations is a critical task that needs to be investigated. In so doing, the objectives of this paper are (i) to present essential information and trends on shared/straddling fish stocks in the PME, (ii) to show the economic characteristics of the shared fish stocks fisheries in the PME, (iii) to study the 1982 UN Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to provide an overview of the fisheries management of shared stocks, (iv) to review the economic concepts, principles and predictive power of the game theory for the analysis of cooperative and non-cooperative fisheries management of shared/straddling fisheries. The empirical results for this work, however, are not presented yet here.