A Retrospective Evaluation of Sustainable Yields for Australia's Northern Prawn Fishery: An Alternative View

The increasing interest in maximum economic yield (MEY) as a management target has been accompanied by considerable debate as to how MEY should be determined. Different interpretations as to how economic costs are treated may lead to different outcomes. For example, a recent paper by Wang and Wang (2012b) provided a retrospective analysis of a recent buyback program in a major Australian fishery aimed at moving the fishery to MEY and concluded that greater economic benefits would have been achieved had the buyback not taken place. However, the economic assumptions underlying this result are debatable. In this article, we provide our own analysis using corrected economic parameters and suggest that, had the buyback not taken place, industry profits from 2006 to 2009 would have been $22-25 million lower. These new findings are placed in the context of the events that led to the buyback taking place and we conclude that the buyback resulted in substantial benefits to the industry.