| Ten years after the start of the European Data Collection Framework the availability of cost indicators for assessing the economic status of fisheries or bio-economic modelling is still deficient. Moreover, economic time series are difficult to maintain due to fishermen weariness and sample coverage is often insufficient. To overcome these problems, the paper builds predictive models per operational cost category (fuel, landing, other variable, fixed, salary and total) for the French Bay of Biscay fleet. The cost models had good fit and stressed the key role of gear and vessel size (length mostly) for explaining fishing costs. They suggested that only a small list of variables was needed to predict costs (days-at-sea, total revenue, vessel age, length and... |
