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

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.