Abstract Marine fisheries are a critically important source of food, nutrition, and employment for millions of people. As the global population increases, new and expanding pressures are created on fish resources. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been widely promoted as valuable tools for rebuilding or maintaining fish stocks around the world. The success of MPAs, however, widely depends on their particular configuration and management and their effectiveness is often object of contentious debates in both scientific and political arenas. Since fisheries management is a collective action problem, some forms of human cooperation in terms of fishing behaviour can lead to sustainable fisheries and can represent, in theory, a complementary or even an alternative approach to the establishment of no-take marine reserves. We present here a new Agent-Based Model (ABM) that captures the main characteristics of an idealised small-scale fishery. We then use the model to investigate the combined effects of different fishing strategies (expressed by a cooperative trait associated to fishing effort) and various configurations of no-take reserves (including presence or absence of MPA, size of MPA, age of MPA, i.e. time elapsed since its establisment, and distance between two MPAs) on fish abundance and catch under an overfishing regime. Our results show that high cooperation without an MPA can be as effective as lower levels of cooperation combined with an MPA in maintaining fish stocks and catches at relatively high levels. The mobility of our fish agents implies that, contrary to current belief, these results may not be limited to sedentary species. We also found that the greatest impacts on fish abundance and catch are produced by the size of an MPA and the time elapsed since its establishment. Furthermore, the distance between two MPAs has no significant effect, regardless of the cooperation levels characterising the fishing agents. Despite its simplicity, the ABM presented here provides insights on the most plausible effects that combinations of different MPA designs and human cooperation strategies can produce on overexploited small-scale fisheries. When appropriately adapted with a realistic, fishery-specific parameterisation, this model can constitute a valuable tool for evaluating the impact of different resource management strategies. We make the model available as open-source software with the aims of fostering reproducibility, transparency, and flow of ideas.

中文翻译：

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模拟小规模渔业中海洋保护区的合作和不同特征的影响

摘要 海洋渔业是数百万人的食物、营养和就业的重要来源。随着全球人口的增加，对鱼类资源产生了新的和不断扩大的压力。海洋保护区 (MPA) 已被广泛宣传为重建或维持世界各地鱼类种群的宝贵工具。然而，海洋保护区的成功在很大程度上取决于其特定的配置和管理，其有效性往往是科学和政治领域争论不休的对象。由于渔业管理是一个集体行动问题，人类在捕捞行为方面的某些形式的合作可以导致可持续渔业，并且理论上可以代表建立禁捕海洋保护区的补充甚至替代方法。我们在这里展示了一个新的基于代理的模型 (ABM)，它捕捉了理想化小规模渔业的主要特征。然后，我们使用该模型来研究不同捕捞策略（由与捕捞努力相关的合作特征表示）和禁捕保护区的各种配置（包括海洋保护区的存在与否、海洋保护区的大小、海洋保护区的年龄，即自建立以来经过的时间，以及两个海洋保护区之间的距离）对过度捕捞制度下鱼类丰度和捕获量的影响。我们的结果表明，在将鱼类种群和渔获量保持在相对较高的水平方面，没有 MPA 的高度合作与较低水平的合作与 MPA 相结合一样有效。我们的鱼类代理人的流动性意味着，与目前的看法相反，这些结果可能不仅限于久坐的物种。我们还发现，对鱼类丰度和捕获量的最大影响是由海洋保护区的规模和自建立以来经过的时间产生的。此外，无论捕捞代理人的合作水平如何，两个海洋保护区之间的距离都没有显着影响。尽管很简单，但此处介绍的 ABM 提供了关于不同 MPA 设计和人类合作策略的组合对过度开发的小规模渔业产生的最合理影响的见解。当与现实的、特定于渔业的参数化进行适当调整时，该模型可以构成评估不同资源管理策略影响的宝贵工具。我们将该模型作为开源软件提供，旨在促进可重复性、透明度和思想流动。