Bioeconomics of the Pacific sardine (Sardinops sagax) fishery in the Gulf of California, Mexico

A bioeconomic model integrating biological and economic factors is developed for the Pacific sardine fishery in the Gulf of California. The model factors in the dynamics of the population structure and applies the basic concepts of the cohort-survival method. Seasonal recruitment was modeled with the distributed-delay method. The dynamics of the fleet were modeled by Smith's function with distributed delays to represent time lags in entry-exit processes. Performance variables such as biomass, fishery yield, effort, and net returns offered robust valuations of the behavior over time, showing a resource overexploited and a fishery fleet overcapitalized. The maximum economic yield and bioeconomic equilibrium of the fishery were also obtained. Of the alternative management strategies considered, minimum size of capture was most successful, offering important increases in the bioeconomic variables.