Smit Vasquez Caballero

Background

Smit holds an undergraduate degree in Economics from Southern Oregon University. He received an M.S. in Agriculture and Resource Economics and a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from Oregon State University. After his graduate education, Smit joined the Future Oceans Lab at the University of Vigo, Spain, as a postdoctoral fellow. At Oregon State University, Smit developed a model of fishers' fishery participation and location choice behavior for the U.S. West Coast salmon fishery. At the Future Oceans Lab, Smit studied Galician fishers' species portfolios to evaluate their resilience and adaptive capacity to climate change impacts. He also supported the development and implementation of a vulnerability assessment in the Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas and in fishing communities in Tanzania. His teaching experience includes introductory economics courses at Southern Oregon University.

Research 

As a contractor at the Social Sciences Branch, Smit is conducting research to review the literature of bio-economic studies of the American lobster fishery and to build a conceptual model of the key economic dynamics affecting the performance of the lobster fishery in the Gulf of Maine. Smit will be involved in providing recommendations on the implementation of an economic operating model that is compatible with the existing biological models to be further developed to support a Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) for the Gulf of Maine American Lobster Fishery. Smit's work will help support the pressing need to have appropriate data and models available to understand how the fishery can be made more resilient and develop effective harvest control rules to maintain desired management outcomes.