Collision of fishing vessels: Lorenz curves and GINI indices

Abstract

Fishing vessel collisions are accidents which, in most cases, give rise to other accidents such as explosions, water on board and even sinking. These are accidents which often have fatal consequences for the crews and in many cases signify the loss of the vessel. Such losses can be avoided or reduced if the fishing vessels are equipped with the appropriate technological means and their crews proceed correctly and promptly. Thus, national governments should include in their regulation of the fishing sector control mechanisms that guarantee that the vessels are endowed with the adequate resources and with crews well-trained in safety. These resources and their distribution must be assigned in accordance with the needs of the fleet, which requires an in-depth knowledge of the degree of concentration of accidentality by collision of the fishing sector of a country. In this context, the aim of this work is twofold: first, to formalise a methodology for the fishing sector of a country which allows the inequalities in the concentration of collisions to be analysed; and second, to apply this methodology to the Spanish fishing fleet for the period 1994-2002. Thus, indices are constructed by region and by fishing types for two variables: fishermen and fishing vessels. In these areas, results are then obtained both for the concentration of collisions and for their associated Lorenz curves. An increase in the enequalities in the spatial and functional distribution of these accidents is observed