Bioeconomic analysis of harvesting within a predator–prey system: A case study in the Chesapeake Bay fisheries

Iordanka N. Panayotova, John Herrmann and Nathan Kolling

Ecological Modelling, 2023, vol. 480, issue C

Abstract: Sustainable use of biological resources is very important as over exploitation on the long run may lead to stock depletion, which in turn may threaten biodiversity. The Chesapeake Bay is an extremely complex ecosystem, and sustainable harvesting of its fisheries is essential both for the ecosystem’s biodiversity and economic prosperity of the area. Here, we use ecosystem based mathematical modeling to study the population dynamics with harvesting of two key fishes in the Chesapeake Bay, the Atlantic Menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus) as a prey and the Striped Bass (Morone saxatilis) as a predator. We start by fitting the generalized Lotka–Volterra model to actual time series abundance data of the two species obtained from fisheries in the Bay. We derive conditions for the existence of the bio-economic equilibrium and investigate the stability and the resilience of the biological system. We study the maximum sustainable yield, maximum economic yield, and resilience maximizing yield policies and their effects on the fisheries long term sustainability, particularly with respect to the menhaden-bass population dynamics. This study may be used by policy-makers to balance the economic and ecological harvesting goals while managing the populations of Atlantic menhaden and striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay fisheries.

Keywords: Mathematical modeling; Differential equations; Predator–prey dynamics; Harvesting policies; Maximum sustainable yield; Maximum economic yield; Resilience maximizing yield (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380023000583
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:480:y:2023:i:c:s0304380023000583

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2023.110330

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Modelling is currently edited by Brian D. Fath

More articles in Ecological Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().