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Marine ecological change is likely to have serious potential economic consequences for coastal economies all over the world. This article reviews the current literature on the economic impacts of marine ecological change, as well as a number of recent contributions to this literature carried out under the VECTORS project. We focus on three main types of change, namely invasive alien species; outbreak-forming species, such as jellyfish and toxic algae; and gradual changes in species distribution and productivity. The case studies available in the literature demonstrate that the impacts of invasions and outbreaks on fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism can potentially amount to several tens of millions of dollars each year in some regions. Moreover, stated preference studies suggest a substantial impact on coastal tourism and non-use values that is likely not visible in case studies of specific outbreak events. Climate-driven gradual changes in distribution and productivity of commercial fish stocks will have an impact on fisheries, although these impacts are likely to be overshadowed by much larger changes in prices of seafood and fuel.

In response to a request to Wageningen University & Research from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, an update of the data and analysis on the value of the fishing activities of the Dutch, British, Danish, German, Belgian, Swedish and French fishing fleets on the proposed closed areas on the Central Oyster Grounds and Frisian Front was prepared. This report uses the method presented in Chapter 5 of Effects of seabed protection on the Frisian Front and Central Oyster Grounds (Van Oostenbrugge et al. 2015) to update the reports already published by Wageningen Economic Research on fishing activity on the proposed closed areas on the Central Oyster Grounds and Frisian Front (Oostenbrugge, Bartelings et al. 2013, Oostenbrugge and Hamon 2014, van Oostenbrugge and Hamon 2014, Oostenbrugge, Turenhout et al. 2016, Oostenbrugge, Turenhout et al. 2016). The effort, value and landings by the Dutch, British, Danish, German, Belgian, Swedish and French fishing fleets are presented for a five-year period (2010-2015) and show variations over the last years without a clear trend. Value of landings and gross value added of the Dutch, British and Belgian fleets have been fluctuating over the past years but there was a clear upward trend for Danish and German fleets. Sweden and France have not been active in the area over the 2010-2015 period. Main target species of the Central Oyster Grounds and Frisian Front are plaice and sole mostly targeted by the beam trawl fleet, and sprat (largest in volume) targeted by the Danish fleet. The other demersal fleets also catch some nephrops and herring.

The lessons learned from a review of thirteen existing Europe an bio-economic models used in the evaluation of EU policies are presented.How the se models compare and differinterms of their biological and economic components,the integration between the components, which indicators are selected and how they are used,are described and analysed.The article concludes that the multitude of construction differences reflects the necessity of adapting the modelling approach to answer different questions. Since real life questions in fisheries are so diverse, answering them requires adiversity of models.