European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) is the main commercially exploited fish stock in the Black Sea region, providing a vital source of livelihood and revenue for local communities and national economies. In recent decades, the Black Sea anchovy stock has faced many human-induced threats, including overfishing, eutrophication, invasive species, and climate change while these threats have raised concerns about the status and long-term productivity of the stock. To ensure sustainable levels of exploitation under potential future changes in stock productivity, we here estimate and compare a suite of biological and economic reference points under different levels of stock productivity and discount rates using an age-structured bioeconomic model setup. Our model simulations showed that optimal fishing mortalities achieving maximum sustainable yield (FMSY) and maximum economic yield (FMEY) increase at higher stock productivity but are always lower than the historically high mean levels of exploitation. Furthermore, we illustrate that the stock biomass at maximum economic yield (BMEY) is larger than the stock biomass at maximum sustainable yield (BMSY) at all stock productivities and discount rates, except at low stock productivity under high levels of discounting (i.e., 10%, 20%). By illustrating the ecological and economic benefits of reducing exploitation rates, we expect that our estimated reference points can add value to the decision-making process for the management of the European anchovy fishery and ensure long-term sustainable management even under future climate-driven changes in stock productivity.

Game theory has been an effective tool to generate solutions for decision making in fisheries involving multiple countries and fleets. Here, we use a coupled bio-economic model based on a Baltic Sea dynamic multispecies food web model called BALMAR and, we compare non-cooperative (NC) and cooperative game (grand coalition: GC) solutions. Applications of game theory based on a food web model under climate change have not been studied before and the present study aims to fill this gap in the literature. The study focuses on the effects of climate variability on the biological, harvest and economic output of the game models by examining two different climate scenarios, a first scenario characterized by low temperature and high salinity and a second scenario by high temperature and low salinity. Our results showed that in the first scenario sprat spawning stock biomass (SSB) and harvest dropped dramatically both in the NC and the GC cases whereas, herring and cod SSBs and harvests were higher compared to a base scenario (BS) keeping temperature and salinity at mean historical levels. In the second scenario, the sprat SSB and the harvest was higher for both GC and NC cases while the cod and the herring SSBs and harvests were lower. The total GC payoffs clearly outperformed the NC payoffs across all scenarios. Likewise, the first and second scenario GC payoffs for countries were higher except for Poland. The findings suggested the climate vulnerability of Baltic Sea multi-species fisheries and these results would support future decision-making processes of Baltic Sea fisheries.

This study investigated biological, social and mainly economic dimensions of recreational fishing (RF) in 8 coastal Middle and Eastern Black Sea provinces of Turkey. In all provinces, a total number of 874 shore-based recreational...

Artificial reefs (ARs) have gained considerable attention in Turkey, due to their positive biological and socioeconomic implications. The most recent and comprehensive AR deployment was completed in Edremit Bay. The authors investigated the stakeholders' perception and satisfaction along with social, economic, and management concerns about the AR deployment for the period October-December 2014. They first defined user and non-user AR stakeholders and their interests in the project. They represented multiple interactions among stakeholders about the AR deployment by focusing on user types, attitudes, or behaviors towards the AR deployment. They queried existing and potential problems about the project and the deployment area to produce consistent management solutions. They suggest that public participation and multiple collaboration would enhance communication and deal among the stakeholders towards finding solutions for the existing problems. Future studies should reveal social, economic, and management aspects of the stakeholders by the medium and long-term monitoring studies.