Modelling a Small-Scale Sea Cucumber Fishery in Yucatan

The status of many sea cucumber fisheries in the world is overexploited. Some of the reasons are: an increase in demand from China, the distance of these fisheries to China, and the high rate of fisheries development. Most sea cucumber fisheries are small-scale with a simple management system. To overcome overexploitation, it is important to know the fisheries management systems. The research questions of this study are: What are the biological and economic factors that accelerate the development of these fisheries? What factors threaten the sustainability of these stocks? And what possible strategies could be implemented? With biological information of the species, fishermen behavior, and the economics, we developed a spatial dynamic bioeconomic model. The model explained the interactions between fishing effort allocation, quasi-profits and population depletion. Our results showed that the main factors that could lead the fishery to the collapse are: a) the spatial pattern, b) excess fishing capacity, c) high quasi-profits in the short term, d) density dependent catchability, and e) heavy density dependence of reproduction. Given the high prices, production, and low opportunity cost of fishers in tropical countries, they often prefer to maximize their short-term gains, regardless of long-term losses due to collapse. Ensuring sustainability requires community agreements and regulations like: minimum legal size, quotas, catch limit per trip, season closed to fishing and rotation of participants