particularly when the state is incurring heavy ex- 

 pense to administer and conserve the resource; the 

 recovery by the state of some part of the net 

 economic yield by means of a tax on fishermen (or 

 on the catch) would recoup at least part of such 

 public expenditures, or could be used to assist 

 former fishermen (see strategies discussed above), 

 for instance, by buying their redundant equipment. 

 A tax on fishermen through the auctioning of 

 licenses has, at least, the merit of using economic 

 means instead of arbitrary regulations to achieve a 

 desired economic objective — the limitation of fish- 

 ing effort to increase the net economic yield from 

 the fishery. Regulations have to be enforced, usu- 

 ally at considerable cost, but economic sanctions 

 tend to be, if not impartial, at least impersonal and 

 automatic in their operation (p. 99-100). 



Actually, this latter management scheme is similar to 

 the taxing scheme, but uses an auction rather than a 

 direct tax. 



C. Social Problems Created by Various 

 Management Schemes. 



Many of the schemes discussed above involve plac- 

 ing an additional cost of fishing on lobstermen through 

 a license fee or auction to reduce fishing effort. If fish- 

 ing effort must be reduced or held constant by license 

 fees, some individuals will leave the fishery or be dis- 

 couraged from entering. Although our general model 

 discussed above indicates how many full-time equiva- 

 lent fishermen might leave the fishery, we still do not 

 have an adequate profile of just which group will 

 leave. 



To analyze the problem, we shall use the survey 

 discussed above taken by a team of economists at the 

 University of Maine in the summer of 1970. Three 

 small communities in Maine — Phippsburg, Corea, and 

 Beals — were samples. One hundred and thirty one 

 fishermen were interviewed, so that the sample rep- 

 resented 2.2% of the fishermen population. The sam- 

 ple appears to be fairly representative in terms of age 

 composition and other demographic features. In addi- 

 tion, it reflects the appropriate proportion of full-time 

 to part-time fishermen found in the population of 6,316 

 fishermen. 



The types of questions asked were designed to ob- 

 tain the following type of information (see Section 

 IV-F for discussion of socioeconomic characteristics). 



Categories 

 Demographic 



Socioeconomic 



Types of Information 



Age 



Family size and composition 



Mobility 



Marital status 



Income 



Employment history 

 Education and training 

 Monetary return 



Parental occupation 

 Housing 



Operational Gear types 



Investment in boat and gear 

 Operating expenses 

 Maintenance and repair expen- 

 ditures 

 Size of operations 

 Seasonal patterns 

 Rate of capacity utilization 



Behavioral- Reasons for lobstering 



Attitudinal Job interests 



Attitudes toward leaving the 



lobster industry 

 Job-seeking 



Attitudes toward training, views 

 on excess capacity 



Given all of the information obtained in the survey, 

 the sample was divided into four groups based upon 

 the degree of mobility out of the fishery. Group one 

 includes the potentially employable individuals who 

 possess skills which are marketable in the local labor 

 market." This group also includes all part-time 

 fishermen in the sample. Group two consists of the 

 possibly trainable fishermen. The criterion established 

 for this group is twofold: 1) individuals have to be less 

 than 35 yr old and 2) they must have enough education 

 so that they can participate in and benefit from 

 training programs. Despite possible subjectivity in- 

 volved in the selection criteria, group two can serve as 

 an approximation of the intermediate individuals who 

 are neither completely mobile nor completely im- 

 mobile. Group three consists of potential hardcore un- 

 employed fishermen. These are the individuals who 

 are between 35 and 65 yr old and who have no 

 marketable skills. Finally, group /o//r contains those 

 individuals who are not in the labor force — students or 

 fishermen over 65. 



The procedure was to derive some estimates of op- 

 portunity cost for the sample fishermen.'- For groups 

 three and four, opportunity costs were assumed to be 

 extremely low. For groups one and two, estimates of 

 regional wage rates for the particular skills indicated 

 were obtained via the Maine Employment Security 

 Commission. Ignoring capital costs, we can derive 

 total social cost by adding our estimates of opportunity 

 cost to variable expenses, calculated from answers 

 given in the survey. Since gross income was also ob- 

 tained from the survey, we can determine average so- 

 cial cost per unit of output (AC) for each fisherman in 

 the following manner: 



"The Maine Employment Security Commission provided sup- 

 plemental information which was useful in ascertaining which skills 

 were marketable in the areas covered by the survey. 



'^Returns necessary to make it profitable for vessels and fisher- 

 men to fish for lobsters. 



33 



