Title: Rents and rents drain in the Lake Victoria Nile perch fishery

A simple bio-economic model of a single industry exploiting a single resource stock was set. The model was applied empirically to determine the optimal economic rents of the Lake Victoria Nile perch fishery. The theoretical model is based on the Schaefer (1954) model on dynamics of population and the Fox (1970) exponential surplus model for optimisation. The main elements of this model are (i) a biomass growth function, (ii) a harvest function and (iii) a fisheries profit function. The current biomass, fishing effort, profits and economic rents were determined against those of an optimal sustainable fishery at an equilibrium level. The fishery inefficiency was determined and an optimal recovery path devised. An efficient management system was proposed to induce efficiency in the fishery and give incentives to fishers in the implementation of a fishery recovery strategy and for sustainable fishery management.