Media attention has, in recent years, been on emphasizing the large negative impacts fisheries have had on marine ecosystems, notably as quantified and described by the Sea Around Us Project. We intend to re-focus the debate so as to identify scenarios for management that allows for co-existence of thriving fisheries and productive ecosystems while ensuring habitat conservation.

The Lenfest Ocean Futures Project addresses the question of how current fisheries management approaches can be modified to become more responsible from social, economical as well as ecological perspectives. The project will develop new approaches to fisheries management through an ecosystem modeling and visualization methodology aimed at exploring scenarios management for high-level participants in policy and management workshops. The project relies on development of three technical components: optimization of the ecological software system, Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE), development of interactive gaming software, and visualization of the impact humans have on the ecosystems concerned. The activity will serve in support of ecosystem-based management of fisheries.

The main deliverable for the first two years of the project is a new version of EwE to be released to the scientific community, while the work on the gaming and visualization software will be initiated. The second phase of the activity (years 3 and 4) will result in a single player gaming version of EwE as well as a multiplayer gaming version with extensive visualization capabilities.

The project will require four years of development and will be co-directed by Drs. Villy Christensen and Daniel Pauly of the Sea Around Us Project, and will be based at the fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia. It is funded by the Lenfest Ocean Program.