Financial Implications of Fishery Management Strategies in a Newly Impounded Man-made Lake in Thailand, a Simulation

The aim of this paper is to study the financial aspects of fisheries management strategies as if they can be approached by linking ecology, trophic relationships, aquatic resources evaluations and socio-economic aspects of fisheries in a newly impounded south East Asian reservoir (Pasak Jolasid near Bangkok, Thailand). This knowledge was used to identify possible risks of financial problems for artisanal fishermen. For that purpose, Ecopath was used to construct a mass-balanced model, which is considered to be a first step in summarizing ecological and biological information in a coherent framework through trophic networks in the reservoir. With Ecosim, two scenarios of increasing fishing effort were sketched: a fishing effort multiplied by two over ten years for all gears and for gill nets alone (other fishing effort assumed to remain constant). The outcomes are evaluated in terms of variations of biomass and catch of fish species and predictable impact on the financial situation of the fishermen. The results are discussed in comparison with the influence of the optimized fishing strategy which can be identified with the appropriate software associated with Ecopath for maximization of the economic or social value of the reservoir. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of fisheries management of the ecosystem.