Application of ecosystem modelling for decision support in marine fisheries management in Vietnam

The Vietnamese marine ecosystem is under threat from a wide range of human activities including fisheries. These activities can change the structure and functioning of the marine ecosystem. To achieve more sustainable fisheries, an ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAFM) is needed. Therefore, the overarching aim of this thesis is to develop scientific tools that can support EAFM in the Vietnamese marine ecosystem. To do so, assessing fishing impacts on ecosystem structure and functioning of the Vietnamese marine ecosystem were performed using different methodologies. First, a time-series assessment of the fisheries was carried out based on reconstructed catch data (landing) between 1981 and 2012. Then, based on the landing data, fishery-based indicators were used to assess the impacts of fishing on the structure of the entire Vietnamese marine ecosystem. Next, inverse models and Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) model were used to evaluate fishing effects on fish communities. Of those, the inverse models were performed to investigate human-induced changes on the functioning of fish communities in the Vietnamese coastal ecosystem. The EwE modelling tool was used to predict ecosystem-level consequences of various fishing scenarios, taking into account the trophic interactions and ecological, social and economic constraints of the Vietnamese coastal fisheries. The present results demonstrated that the Vietnamese ecosystem has experienced changes and stress the need for a closer inspection of the ecological impact of fishing.

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