278 
Fishery Bulletin 115(3) 
Table 1 
Number of vessels, mean physical characteristics, effort, and revenue for vessels used to derive the 
Bennet-Bowley productivity indicator in this study to measure productivity change before and after the 
implementation of a catch share system in 2010 for the northeast groundfish fishery. 
Year 
Vessels 
Mean 
weight 
(metric tons) 
Mean 
length 
(m) 
Mean 
horsepower 
(hp) 
Trips 
Mean 
number 
of days 
fished 
Mean 
value 
($1000s 
U.S. 2010) 
2007 
585 
54 
16.2 
426 
39.9 
44.4 
210.2 
2008 
535 
54 
16.2 
429 
43 
46.6 
214.2 
2009 
489 
52 
16.2 
428 
45.8 
47 
209.8 
2010 
371 
54 
16.2 
446 
28 
43 
239.5 
2011 
344 
57 
16.5 
455 
34.9 
54.6 
298.3 
2012 
338 
58 
16.5 
460 
33 
53.6 
246.1 
2013 
283 
59 
16.8 
467 
28.9 
55.2 
241.6 
were Atlantic cod, haddock, roundfish (pollock, white 
hake, and monkfish), flatfish (yellowtail flounder, witch 
flounder, winter flounder, American plaice), skates 
(barndoor, rosetta, winter, clearnose, thorny, little, and 
smooth skates), and an “other” category which was all 
other species. 
Inputs included fuel, ice (for storing fish), bait (only 
on vessels using hook-and-line gear), crew services, and 
capital user cost. The quantity of fuel used on each 
trip was calculated from trip level regression mod- 
els (Walden and Kitts, 2014). Fuel price ($2010, GDP 
implicit price deflator) was an average yearly price 
calculated from fuel prices collected on trips with an 
observer present (i.e., sampling trips). Crew services 
were the product of crew size obtained from vessel log- 
books multiplied by the corresponding days the vessel 
spent at sea. Because crew members in this fishery are 
usually compensated by sharing in the proceeds from 
the trip, there is no observed wage rate (i.e., price of 
labor) to use in the index. Instead, the average hourly 
earnings for construction workers obtained from the 
Bureau of Labor Statistics (Current Employment Sta- 
tistics, website, accessed March 2015) was used as a 
proxy for hourly crew wages because crews need to be 
compensated at least as much as they be for labor in 
other industries (i.e., opportunity cost). Although the 
choice of opportunity cost data may seem arbitrary, 
past studies have used similar approaches although 
the choice of alternative occupations has varied. For 
example, Squires (1992) used the average hourly wage 
in the retail, transportation, and manufacturing sectors 
in his study of the Pacific coast trawl fishery. Skirtun 
and Vieira (2012) used the hourly wages of agricultural 
workers in Australia in their study of profit drivers in 
Australian fisheries. Given the wide geographic distri- 
bution of vessels in our study (Maine to Virginia), we 
consider the wage rate for construction workers to be 
an appropriate measure for wages. Hourly wages mul- 
tiplied by 8 was considered the daily opportunity cost 
of crew labor. The daily cost of food per crew member, 
calculated from sampling trips, was then added to the 
daily wage rate to obtain a total daily cost per crew 
member per day at sea. 
In past studies, fishing vessel performance was 
mearsured by using the concept of capital services to 
measure the flow of capital (Squires, 1992; Dupont et 
al., 2005). In this study, we need both a price for capital 
and a quantity of capital for each time period. To cal- 
culate the price of capital during each period, we adopt 
the “capital user cost” concept (Balk, 2011), which is a 
per unit (vessel) cost constructed from 3 components: 
1) the opportunity cost of capital, which reflects the 
the price which must be paid to an owner of an as- 
set to prevent the asset from being sold (Balk, 2011); 
2) the value change of the asset, which reflects both 
depreciation and re-investment in the asset (for the 
vessels in this study, only depreciation will be consid- 
ered, because investment value is generally not avail- 
able); and 3) the specific taxes levied on the use of an 
asset, which are not relevant to the fishing vessels in 
this study. We note that this approach is essentially 
the same method outlined by Christensen and Jorgen- 
son (1969). However, we are limited in our ability to 
carry out these calculations because of a lack of data 
on investment value and because vessel values likely 
changed after the switch to sector management. 
The value of capital was set at $5053 per meter of 
vessel length (Pan and Walden, 2015), and the interest 
rate used was the yield for BAA-rated bonds (Squires, 
1992; Walden and Kitts, 2014) deflated to 2010 levels 
by using the GDP implicit price deflator. Depreciation 
was set at 6%, which was based on rates established 
by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The quantity 
of capital used is the the percentage of recorded fish- 
ing time a vessel has spent in the groundfish fishery. 
A vessel that operates 100% of the time in the fishery 
has a value of 1. By making this adjustment, the en- 
tire capital user cost is not charged to the groundfish 
