Conley Fisheries (from Bertsimas and Freund, Data Models and Decisions)
Clint Conley, president of Conley Fisheries, Inc., operates a fleet of cod fishing boats out of Newbury
point, Massachusetts. Clint’s Father started the company forty years ago but recently turned the business
over to Clint, who has been working for the family business since earning his MBA ten years ago. Every
weekday of the year, each boats leaves early in the morning, fishes for the most of the dayand completes
its codfish (3500 lbs. of codfish) by mid-afternoon. The boat then has a number of ports where it can sell
its daily catch. The price of some codfish at some ports is very uncertain and can change quite a bit even
on daily basis. Also, the price of codfish tends to be different at different ports. Furthermore, some ports
have only have limited demand for codfish, and so if a boat arrives relatively later than other fishing boats
at that port, the catch of fish cannot be sold and must be disposed of in ocean waters.
To keep Conley Fisheries’ problem simple enough to analyze with ease, assume that Conley Fisheries
operates only one boat, and that daily expenses of the boat are $ 10,000 per day. Also assume that the
boat is always able to catch all the fish that it can hold, which is 3,500 lb. of codfish.
Assume that Conley fisheries’ boat can bring its catch either the port in Gloucester or the port in
Rockport, Massachusetts. Gloucester is a major port for the codfish with a well-established market. The
price of codfish in Gloucester is $ 3.25/ lb., and this price has been stable for quite some time. The price
of the codfish in Rockport is tends to be a bit higher than Gloucester but has a lot of variability. Clint has
estimated that the daily codfish in Rockport is Normally distributed with a mean µ = $ 3.65/lb. and with a
standard deviation of 𝜎 = $0.20/𝑙𝑏 .
