Progress 10/01/09 to 09/30/14
Outputs
Target Audience: The target audiences for this project are the seafood industry, retailers, restauranteurs, the catch sector and aquaculture producers, policy makers, environmentalists and academics. For this reporting period, which focused mostly on the market analysis of wild shellfish harvest and its regulations, our primary targeted audience is the Rhode Island Shellfish Management Plan initiative, and also the industry stakeholders who are participating in this plan development. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Graduate student, Pratheesh Sudhakaran, is involved in the project carrying out the econometric analysis under the guidance of Uchida and and other faculty members. This project will constitute a chapter of his dissertation. Graduate student, Chao Zou, joined the project from the second half of 2013. He is working on the analysis of ecolabeled seafood markets with particular focus on the demand for such products by retailers and upstream supply chain stakeholders. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Some of the key results were incoporated in the final draft of Rhode Island Shellfish Management Plan, which was released in November 2014. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Wild shellfish management in Rhode Island is undertaken by the RI Department of Environmental Management (DEM), aimedto achieve conserving naturally occurring shellfish populations in RI waters and managing public health outcomes due towater quality issues. Management is further complicated and made more challenging by economic factors: to a large extent,RI's shellfish management programs are driven by the economic interests of commercial harvesters. Harvesters have longsought a regulatory program that limits access to certain areas in order to meter the flow of product to the market, and extendthe season. The reality, however, is that while DEM and the RI Marine Fishery Council annually engage in a regulatoryprocess aimed, in part, at meeting the economic interests of the commercial industry, the process is undertaken without asound understanding of the market forces affecting those interests. As such, an economic analysis of the Rhode Islandshellfish market, and a better understanding of how the management interacts with the market, is essential to guide andsupport shellfish management policies in Rhode Island. This project set out to understand the market demand for wild-harvested clam species in Rhode Island to enhance theintegration of its fishery management and marketing (objective #2 above). Using the database descibed in previous section,we are in the process of estimating AIDS model to obtain own-price and cross-price elasticities among different shallfishspecies and/or market categories. The preliminary regression model showed some insights about the clam (quahog) market in Rhode Island. The elasticity value suggests that demand for cooked quahog is less vulnerable to price change than the raw quahog products. Furthermore,scallops and clams are not a substitute product for cooked quahog where as the raw quahog is a substitute. The modelsuggests that cooked quahogs (market cateogories "cherrystone" and "chowder" in particular) are more in demand than theraw quahog (ditto "little neck" and "top neck"). Moreover, the model also revealed that the cooked quahogs are preferredthroughout the year with a higher demand during summer months where as the demand for raw quahogs are confined towinter months especially February.These results were refined by applying nonlinear version of inverse almost ideal demand system model, and we are currentlyanalyzing the results. Some of these key results were incorporated into the Rhode Island Shellfish Manalement Plan.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Sudhakaran, Pratheesh, and Hirotsugu Uchida. 2014. Estimation of Demand System of Bivalves in Rhode Island. Biennial
Conference of International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, July 2014, Brisbane, Australia.
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Progress 10/01/12 to 09/30/13
Outputs
Target Audience: The target audiences for this project are the seafood industry, retailers, restauranteurs, the catch sector and aquaculture producers, policy makers, environmentalists and academics. For this reporting period, which focused mostly on the market analysis of wild shellfish harvest and its regulations, our primary targeted audience is the Rhode Island Shellfish Management Plan initiative, and also the industry stakeholders who are participating in this plan development. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Graduate student, Pratheesh Sudhakaran, is involved in the project carrying out the econometric analysis under the guidance of Uchida and Sproul. It is expected that this project will constitute a chapter of his dissertation. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Preliminary report was submitted to Shellfish Management Plan managing team comprised of DEM staff and academics (URI and Roger Williams University). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? (1) For shellfish management project, we will fine tune our analysis in estimating the own- and cross-price elasticities, and effects of other factors influencing the demand for these products. (2) We will also initiate another project under objective #2 -- developing decision support tools for fishery manegement -- that focuses on a new way of integrating fishery data (harvest volume and its location) for spatially-explicit assessment of fish stocks.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Wild shellfish management in Rhode Island is undertaken by the RI Department of Environmental Management (DEM), aimed to achieve conserving naturally occurring shellfish populations in RI waters and managing public health outcomes due to water quality issues. Management is further complicated and made more challenging by economic factors: to a large extent, RI’s shellfish management programs are driven by the economic interests of commercial harvesters. Harvesters have long sought a regulatory program that limits access to certain areas in order to meter the flow of product to the market, and extend the season. The reality, however, is that while DEM and the RI Marine Fishery Council annually engage in a regulatory process aimed, in part, at meeting the economic interests of the commercial industry, the process is undertaken without a sound understanding of the market forces affecting those interests. As such, an economic analysis of the Rhode Island shellfish market, and a better understanding of how the management interacts with the market, is essential to guide and support shellfish management policies in Rhode Island. This project set out to understand the market demand for wild-harvested clam species in Rhode Island to enhance the integration of its fishery management and marketing (objective #2 above). Using the database descibed in previous section, we are in the process of estimating AIDS model to obtain own-price and cross-price elasticities among different shallfish species and/or market categories. The preliminary regression model shows some insights about the clam (quahog) market in Rhode Island. The elasticity value suggests that demand for cooked quahog is less vulnerable to price change than the raw quahog products. Furthermore, scallops and clams are not a substitute product for cooked quahog where as the raw quahog is a substitute. The model suggests that cooked quahogs (market cateogories "cherrystone" and "chowder" in particular) are more in demand than the raw quahog (ditto "little neck" and "top neck"). Moreover, the model also revealed that the cooked quahogs are preferred throughout the year with a higher demand during summer months where as the demand for raw quahogs are confined to winter months especially February.
Publications
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Progress 10/01/11 to 09/30/12
Outputs
OUTPUTS: URI Seafood Initiative and its website have been the primary output of this project in the past periods; however, with the departure of the principal investigator involved in the Initiative (details below) nothing has occurred during this reporting period. A new project began during this reporting period, which is within the stated objective, that looks into better management practice for oyster aquaculture operation in the face of increasing risk of food borne disease due to climate change. The project will focus primarily the oyster farmers in RI. Efforts in collecting publicly available data has begun. PARTICIPANTS: Hirotsugu Uchida, PI David Beutel, co-PI, aquaculture specialist (incl. oyster aquaculture) Thomas Sproul, collaborator, Assistant Professor, URI Pratheesh Sudhakaran, PhD candidate TARGET AUDIENCES: For oyster project, the target audiences are oyster farmers, shellfish sector (both farmed and wild catch), seafood dealers, retailers, restauranteurs, policy makers, environmentalists and academics. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Original PI of this project and who led the Sustainable Seafood Initiative, Cathy Roheim, left URI in October 2011. The survey project led by Roheim was mostly completed before she left, and the publication came out during this project period. Hirotsugu Uchida took over as PI, and PhD candidate Pratheesh Sudhakaran stayed on the project to start a new but related research topic using skills he acquired in previous periods, under Uchida's supervision.
Impacts
The analysis of survey data collected was completed in previous reporting period, and due to the departure of principal investigator involved in Sustainable Seafood Initiative there has not been any follow up on that project. The new oyster farm project is still in its infancy; the anticipated outcomes include improved shellfish management policy that recognizes the market forces at work when evaluating proposed intervention in, or regulation of, shellfish harvest timing, volume, or practices. In particular, interventions on the supply side for a given species will necessarily interact with market demand, which will incorporate prices/availability of that species outside the local market, as well as prices/availability of other shellfish species in the region.
Publications
- Roheim, C.A., P. Sudhakaran, and C.A. Durham. 2012. Certification of Shrimp and Salmon for Best Aquaculture Practices: Assessing Consumer Preferences in Rhode Island, Aquaculture Economics and Management, 16:3, 266-286.
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Progress 10/01/10 to 09/30/11
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The URI Sustainable Seafood Initiative is a primary conduit for disseminating outputs from this project to communities of interest. One vehicle through which outputs are disseminated is the Sustainable Seafood Initiative website which provides educational materials on ecolabeling of seafood products to producers, members of the supply chain, policy makers, and the environmental community. A purpose of this project was to enhance the website to include better and more informative information on ecolabeling of aquacultured seafood. To that end, the website has been augmented to include: 1) additional literature added to the 'Resources Database' (an online searchable database of relevant literature to aquaculture certification); and b) the addition of downloadable output from this project to the 'News' page of the website. The URI sustainable Seafood Initiative also facilitates presentations of project results through presentations at conferences (e.g. the 2011 Baird Symposium "Ocean to Plate" a collaboration between Johnston and Wales University and RI Sea Grant) and through media interviews (one in the publication Seafood Business). PARTICIPANTS: Cathy A. Roheim, PI Dave Beutel, co-PI, aquaculture specialist, CRMC Pratheesh Sudhakaran, Ph.D. candidate Susan Gorelick, Ph.D. candidate Catherine Durham, collaborator, Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics, Oregon State University TARGET AUDIENCES: The target audiences are the seafood industry, retailers, restauranteurs, the catch sector and aquaculture producers, policy makers, environmentalists and academics. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
One of the objectives of the project was to conduct a survey of consumers in Rhode Island to determine their preferences and willingness to pay for ecolabeled aquacultured seafood. The outcomes of that to data has been a greater understanding of the differences between consumers' perceptions of farmed seafood and the environmental impacts of it production processes relative to what is already known about consumers' perceptions about capture fisheries. Analysis of the data shows that Rhode Island consumers have some preference for certified aquaculture products, certified according to the definition provided in the survey, although there is also a strong preference for wild seafood. There are a significant number of respondents who believe that there are quality differences between farmed and wild seafood, largely having to do with freshness which can favor wild if the product is local. However, freshness can favor farmed products if wild products have been previously frozen. Impacts of dissemination of information and education through the URI Sustainable Seafood Initiative has increased understanding of aquaculture production practices by the target communities, leading to more informed decision making by consumers.
Publications
- Roheim, C., Sudhakaran, P., Durham, C. 2011. "Sustainability Certification of Aquacultured Seafood: Assessing Consumer Preferences", in review for publication.
- Susan S. Gorelick, Pratheesh O. Sudhakaran, Cathy A. Roheim, David Beutel,(2011) "Ecolabeling of Seafood from Aquaculture: A Survey of Rhode Island Consumer Preferences" URI Sustainable Seafood Report, July.
- URI Sustainable Seafood Initiative. 2011. http://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/sustainableseafood/index.html
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Progress 10/01/09 to 09/30/10
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The URI Sustainable Seafood Initiative is a primary conduit for disseminating outputs from this project to communities of interest. One vehicle through which outputs are disseminated is the Sustainable Seafood Initiative website which provides educational materials on ecolabeling of seafood products to producers, members of the supply chain, policy makers, and the environmental community. A purpose of this project was to enhance the website to include better and more informative information on ecolabeling of aquacultured seafood. To that end, the website has been augmented in the following ways: a) the addition of more information on groups which have programs to certify sustainable aquaculture production; b) additional literature added to the 'Resources Database' (an online searchable database of pertinent literature) relevant to aquaculture certification; and c) addition of downloadable output from this project to the 'News' page of the website. The URI Sustainable Seafood Initiative also facilitates presentations of project results through presentations at industry conferences (e.g. the Boston Seafood Show), academic conferences (e.g. Aquaculture America) and through media interviews (two on the internationally distributed SeafoodSource.com, one in the publication Seafood Business). PARTICIPANTS: 1) Cathy A. Roheim, PI 2) Huiqiang Wang, Ph.D. candidate and graduate research assistant 3) Dave Beutel, co-PI, aquaculture specialist, CRMC, provided feedback on the development of the survey 4) Pratheesh Sudhakaran, Ph.D. candidate and URI Sustainable Seafood Fellow (project funded) TARGET AUDIENCES: The target audiences are the seafood industry, retailers, restaurateurs, the catch sector and aquaculture producers, policy-makers, environmentalists, and academics. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
One of the objectives of the project is to conduct a survey of consumers in Rhode Island to determine their preferences and willingness to pay for ecolabeled aquacultured seafood. The creation of the survey itself was a research endeavor, as much effort went into that process with an intensive literature review, two focus groups, pre-testing, and finally implementation of the survey in August and September. The outcomes of that process to date have been a greater understanding of the differences between consumers' perceptions of farmed seafood and the environmental impacts of its production processes relative to what is already known about consumers' perceptions of wild-harvested seafood. Data analysis is on-going and impacts of results are yet to be realized. Impacts of dissemination of information and education through the URI Sustainable Seafood Initiative has been increased understanding by the target communities of the complexities of identifying, producing, and sourcing sustainable seafood.
Publications
- URI Sustainable Seafood Initiative. 2010. http://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/sustainable_seafood/index.html.
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