Fisheries Management Models: Assumptions and Realities or, Why Shrimpers in Mississippi Are Not Firms

The Schaefer-Gordon model of fisheries management does not adequately predict the state of stocks or the behavior of fishermen. In any scientific discourse, this should call the basic assumptions into question. I review the challenges to the model's biological assumptions and argue that its economic assumptions are also flawed. I review the approach developed by A.V. Chayanov for studying peasant economies in conjunction with comparative data on other fisheries and data from Mississippi Shrimpers to show that Chayanov's model characterizes the shrimpers of Mississippi. From the comparative and ethnographic data, I conclude that fishermen do not operate as firms. This further calls into question the adequacy of the current fisheries management model and raises the question of how and why such an inadequate model is perpetuated.