Patricia A. Livingston

Multispecies Perspectives on the Bering Sea Groundfish Fisheries Management Regime

Abstract The need to understand the multispecies implications of various harvesting regimes is becoming more important as fishery managers move toward ecosystem-based management. We explore the possible effects that different exploitation rates may have on eastern Bering Sea groundfish using a multispecies simulation context that incorporates predator–prey relationships. At present, some groundfish species in the eastern Bering Sea are exploited up to the recommended levels of allowable biological catch, whereas others, for economic or bycatch limitation reasons, are only lightly exploited. We explore the possible long-term multispecies implications of different exploitation patterns on the biomass and yield of several groundfish species using predator−prey suitability estimates derived from multispecies virtual population analysis (MSVPA) in a multispecies simulation modeling context and compare those predictions with those from single-species forecasting models. Three different fishing scenarios that in...