Crop rotations in the sea: Increasing returns and reducing risk of collapse in sea cucumber fisheries

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1406689112
• Publication Date: 2015-05-12T02:43:32Z
• Authors: Éva Elizabeth Pla...; Timothy Skewes; Nicole Murphy; Ricardo Pascual; Mibu Fischer
• Keywords: Overexploitation; Crop Rotation

Significance Rotating the harvest of natural resources is a management strategy that humans have used on land for centuries, but it less commonly applied to marine resources. Marine animals, such as sea cucumbers, scallops, and abalone, may be particularly suited this form management. Although highly important many communities worldwide, they are often severely overexploited, underlining need effective easy manage strategies. We modeled rotational zone multispecies cucumber fishery in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Park show substantial reduction risk localized depletion, higher long-term yields, improved economic performance. Hence, our results support use harvests better these