ISIS-Fish, a generic and spatially explicit simulation tool for evaluating the impact of management measures on fisheries dynamics

Assessing the impact of management scenarii on multi-species multi-fleet fisheries requires spatially and seasonally explicit simulation tools. No such tools are currently available in fisheries science. This paper presents a software that evaluates the impact of management measures on the dynamics of a complex fishery. The simulation model is generic in order to be used for different types of fisheries. Existing knowledge about each fishery is stored in a database included in the software, and may be easily modified. This includes the parameters describing each population and each fishing activity. Furthermore, the software allows for flexibility in several model assumptions. Both management measures and behaviour of fishermen in reaction to these measures may be interactively designed through a Script language. The simulation tool thus enables one to compare the respective impacts of conventional management measures like catch and effort controls, and measures more recently advocated like marine protected areas. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.