Predicting recovery trajectories for the large species and large fish indicators ...

• Main Authors: Fung, Tak, Farnsworth, Keith D., Shephard, Samuel, Reid, David G., Rossberg, Axel G.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: ASC 2011 - Theme session N 2024
• Subjects: Technologies and data; Ecosystem observation, processes and dynamics; Northeast Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.25039259; https://ices-library.figshare.com/articles/conference_contribution/Predicting_recovery_trajectories_for_the_large_species_and_large_fish_indicators/25039259

No abstracts are to be cited without prior reference to the author.How quickly and to what level do commercial fish stocks recover following release from fishing? Addressing these questions is imperative for long‐term management of overexploited stocks. We use an innovative multi‐trophic model to predict how fish community structures recover from different fishing scenarios when fishing is reduced. This model realistically captures many properties of Northeast Atlantic shelf communities. In particular, it has a unique stochastic algorithm allowing up to thousands of model species to stably coexist, thus allowing realistic species richness to be modelled. Fish community structure is quantified using the large species indicator (LSI) and large fish indicator (LFI), two complementary size‐based indicators. We discovered that targeting large fish species or non‐selective fishing of all fish species always decreased the LSI and LFI. In addition, equilibrium recovery levels decreased with increasing fishing ...