The importance of predator–prey overlap—predicting North Sea cod recovery with a multispecies assessment model Alexander

Abstract

The Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF), nowadays worldwide on political agendas, takes into account ecosystem knowledge, considers multiple external influences and looks at the broader impact of fisheries on the entire ecosystem (FAO, 2003), rather than trying to manage fish stocks singly. Specifically, it deals with effects of fishing on ecosystems, effects of ecosystems on fisheries and the manipulation of ecosystems, such as setting harvest levels for one stock to achieve a particular state in another ecosystem component (O’Boyle et al., 2008). This requires that multispecies interactions via predation or competition must be taken into account when evaluating management decisions in an ecosystem context.