Implications of the diversity of human behaviour for sustainable fisheries management

Project aim. Understanding the implications of fisher behaviours for sustainable fishery management.

Approach.  Use of social fishery science, interaction with Baltic sea fishery experts and agent-based modelling to explore the consequences of a diversity of fisher behaviour under different environmental and managerial scenarios. Targeting to 1) enable the use of knowledge from social fishery science in management and 2) enable to move beyond the standard (economic) assumptions on human behaviour, such as the profit maximiser, for the many contexts they do not apply.

Why? Sustainable fisheries are more than just having enough fish to meet our food demand. It also includes people, having a profession and home that is depending directly or indirectly on the fishery. For example, tourism due to fishing communities, fishers trade and knowledge passed on by generations, restaurants niche to sell local or a particular fish etc. It is thus crucial to understand what is the role of fisher behaviour on the sustainability of fisheries, how do fishers respond to management, what are tradeoffs/stakes when managing?, and what role do our assumptions play?

Model. FIBE represents a simple fishery model. Fish that reproduce and fisher with different fishing styles that fish as their main source of income. The aim of the model is to reflect the different fishing behaviours as described and observed in the (Swedish) Baltic Sea fishery and explore the consequences of different approximations of human/fisher behaviour in under different environmental and managerial scenarios.

Keywords: Natural resource management | Sustainable fisheries | Social fishery science | Fisher behaviour.

People: Nanda Wijermans, Wijnand Boonstra, Maja Schlüter, Kirill Orach,  and Jonas Hentati-Sundberg.

Methods: Agent-based modelling

Funding: ERC SES-LINK

More info: publication (in review), model on openABM (available by summer 2019)