A spatial decision support system for the sustainable management of fishing in marine protected areas.

Fishing is a worldwide activity impacting on limited stocks, that can recover, but it’s necessary to avoid over-exploitation and permanent damages to ecosystems. The aim of this work is to provide a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) for develop sustainable management strategies for fishing in marine protected areas (MPAs). The system, based on a generalized and iterable procedure and tested on Portofino MPA (Italy), can be applied to any area. Starting from the assessment of the natural capital, the SDSS allows an ecosystem-based evaluation of fishing impact based on information (namely the harvest per species) gathered during the authorisation procedure, mandatory for fishermen in MPA. Subtracting the fishing annual harvest flow from the fish biomass production flow, it is possible, for each species, to assess if the MPA system is able to support fishing or if there is an over-fishing condition. Being fishing spatially distributed, the SDSS generates results (e.g. values, maps) at different spatial level: MPA, protection zones and even smaller. The models implementation in a computerized system as SDSS allows simplifying and quickly updating results and carrying out simulations of alternative management scenarios responding to manager needs in real time so to establish ad hoc actions.