Certain deductions can be made about the bio- 

 logical and economic implications of this lagged 

 response approach to maximum sustainable 

 yield. .4 priori, it appears that its economic 

 viability is a function of the stability of the 

 population. And since we have already sug- 

 gested that those populations which are fished 

 heavily, i.e., those exploited close to or even 

 beyond the maximum sustainable yield, tend 

 to show greater fluctuations, it follows that 

 accurate forecasts of short run supply changes 

 will require a continuous extensive biological 

 research program. '•> 



Political Science and Sociology 



The discussion thus far has been aimed 

 at understanding the nature and limitations 

 of the maximum physical yield as a biological 

 construct and as a tool in fisheries manage- 

 ment. The technical side of the problem is 

 however just one part of it. As one distin- 

 guished fisheries administrator put it: 



I wish to inquire whether social and 

 political problems are included within the 

 scope of fisheries economics. If so, we may 

 be able to arrive at a fairly broad and com- 

 prehensive view on matters of fishery regu- 

 lation. If not, then I think they must be treated 

 as separate aspects (McHugh, 1962). 



Neither the economist nor the biologist 

 will, based on what can be learned from the 

 individual disciplines, accept responsibility 

 for the social and political problems associ- 

 ated with the fisheries. They have both been 

 guilty of implying that social and political 

 objectives will best be met by choosing the 

 alternative they espouse. However, since social 

 and political objectives themselves are apt 

 to be as disparate as are the biological and 

 economic, the debaters have grasped at only 

 those aspects of social and political policy 

 that have best fit their needs at the moment. 



Table 1. — Run of sockeye salmon to Bristol Bay, 

 1960-1970.* 



"> One alternative would be to limit fishing: effort 

 to that sufficient to harvest only the lower portion of 

 the range of variation in the stock. This would give 

 a small output at low cost with little or no require- 

 ment for investment in biology. Since, however, this 

 would be a disequilibrium situation with long nan 

 excess profits in all probability it could not be sus- 

 tained in the face of the economic pressures to expand. 



Range 

 Median 



Mean 



Coefficient 

 of variation 



7.7-53.1 



n.5 



20.8 

 74% 



Approximate forecasting 

 errors: 



1960-1970 140% 



Anticipated accuracy of 

 forecasts in near future: 



± 20% in 4 years out of 5 



± 50% in 5th year 



1 am deeply indebted to Dr. Donald E. Rogers of the Fisheries 

 Research Institute of the University of Washington for assem- 

 bling the complex data on the runs and forecasts of Bristol 

 Bay and Western Alaska Sockeye (from which Table 1 is ex- 

 cerpted). As noted in the text, the purpose in presenting these 

 figures is to emphasize the year-to-year variations in supply. 



They have not dealt in a rigorous analytical 

 way with these pi'oblems. 



In this it seems fair to say that the biolo- 

 gists have been the political realists while 

 the economists, to the extent that they have 

 dealt with the question of labor mobility, 

 income distribution, and the impact of barriers 

 to entry on the scale of enterprise, have been 

 closer to social realities. 



Economists have insisted correctly, in my 

 judgment, in their discussion of the problems 

 of fisheries, that the general economic wel- 

 fare of the state and the individuals in it are 

 best served by maximizing the net economic 

 yield from the resource. Their occasional 

 willingness to temporize their position arises 

 for the following reason. For species of fish 

 with a high unit value such as lobster, red 

 salmon, etc., the discrepancy between the 

 maximum sustainable physical yield and the 

 net economic yield is not apt to be very 

 large, the former being a second best solu- 



16 



