Ecological implications of alternative fishing strategies for apex predators

We ask support to a working group that will develop modeling tools intended to set alternative fishing practices in an ecosystem context for the yellowfin tuna fishery pursued in the eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO). We ask NCEAS to serve as the primary sponsor of this effort and offer joint sponsorship through the auspices of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) based in La Jolla, California. We propose to incorporate historical and recent data from the EPO with a new spatially-explicit version of the Ecosim model. The effort will involve three phases: an initial development of the model, rigorous evaluation of that through collaboration with key scientists external to the working group, and a workshop held in collaboration with representatives of conservationist groups and fisheries agencies which will evaluate the policy options pertinent to development of sustainable fishery goals. The EPO is an ideal system to develop this approach, first because the data availability rivals that of any pelagic system in the world, and second because the three fishing strategies used by the EPO tuna fishery impact the ecosystem in markedly different ways, more so than in other comparable systems. An NCEAS working group will maximize the potential to create a tractable method of addressing ecological interactions of the scale pertinent to a pelagic, open-ocean food web. The results will provide a basis for developing strategies to address urgent fisheries by catch issues set in an ecological context.