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 re-focus the debate so as to identify issues faced by management by enableing modeling scenario development with the intention to allow for co-existence of thriving fisheries and productive ecosystems while ensuring habitat conservation.

The Lenfest Ocean Futures Project (LOFP) 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 develops and implements new approaches to fisheries management through an ecosystem modeling, visualization and decision system methodologies 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 LOFP has completed the first two years of the project which is to create a new version of EwE6 that has been successfully released to the scientific community.  It is currently halfway through the second phase of the project which is to build on the gaming and visualization software.  This outcome will also result in a single player gaming version of EwE as well as a multiplayer gaming version with extensive visualization and decision-making system capabilities.

 The project requires four years of development and will be directed by Dr. Villy Christensen 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.

Near final iteration of Ocean Summit software.