Defining yield policies in a viability approach

Mullon et al. (2004) proposed a dynamical model of biomass evolution in the Southern Benguela ecosystem, including five different groups (detritus, phytoplankton, zooplankton, pelagic fish and demersal fish). They studied this model in a viability perspective, trying to assess, for a given constant yield, whether each species biomass remains inside a given interval, taking into account the uncertainty on the interaction coefficients. Instead of studying the healthy states of this marine ecosystem with a constant yield, we focus here on the yield policies which keep the system viable. Using the mathematical concept of viability kernel, we examine how yield management might guarantee viable fisheries. One of the main practical difficulties up to now with the viability theory was the lack of methods to solve the problem in large dimensions. In this paper, we use a new method based on SVMs, which gives this theory a larger practical potential. Solving the viability problem provides all yield policies (if any) which guarantee a perennial system. We illustrate our main findings with numerical simulations.