Impact of pollution on sardine, sardinella, and mackerel fishery: a bioeconomic approach

Abstract

This paper studies a bioeconomic model of three species of small pelagic marine species in Moroccan coastal areas: Sardine, Sardinella and shark. The model combines competition and predation. Two areas are proposed, one is polluted and the other is not. The model combines a biological part describing the evolution of the biomass of stocks subjected to fishing mortality and an economic part explaining the mortality rate. We study the existence and stability of equilibrium states through eigenvalue analysis and the Routh-Hirwitz criterion, then introduce economic approaches to determine the effort needed to maximize the fishermen’s income. Numerical simulations are performed. The objective of this paper is to study the impact of pollution on the existence, evolution of biomass and predation, fishing effort, catches, and profits.