| Balanced harvest has been suggested as a new paradigm of fisheries management in order to minimize the impacts of fisheries on marine ecosystems, by distributing the fishing pressure on all species and trophic levels, proportionally to the productivity of each group, to maintain their relative abundance in the ecosystem. However, this exploitation pattern has been criticized by a few scientists arguing that exploitation of all trophic levels may lead to a large ecosystem impact, due to the cumulative effects of fishing along the food web. There is no consensus within the literature about Balanced Harvest implementation and effects because scarce knowledge. Using Ecopath with Ecosim model of the Celtic Sea as case studies, we assessed the impacts of... |
