The value of information in a congested fishery

Congestion can reduce the value of a fishery, resulting in a lower total catch for the same amount of labor, fuel, and equipment expended in fishing activities. Absent the congestion externality, better information about the location and size of fish stocks enables fishers to make more efficient decisions. However, more precise information can cause fishers to converge on the same location or increase fishing at the same time. The cost of the resulting increased congestion can outweigh the direct benefit of better information. This paper identifies the circumstances where an increase in the precision of public and/or private information (about stock size or location) lowers industry profits. Using high-resolution data from Peru’s anchoveta fishery, the world’s largest by catch volume, the research reveals that despite considerable congestion, more precise private information would increase expected profits. On the other hand, the profit impact of more precise public information is positive but significantly smaller. This difference reflects the fact that public information increases congestion to a much greater extent, compared to private information. The policy implications are that improving private information about fish stocks—for example through firms investing in forecasting and decision-making technology—could increase industry profits. But anchoveta fishers would not necessarily benefit from more precise public information. As fishery managers control the accessibility and disclosure of information, decisions to make private information public, such as publishing near real-time catch data, could potentially lower fisher profits.