Dynamic ecosystem models and the evaluation of ecosystem effects of fishing: can we make meaningful predictions?

Focuses on fishing, which is one of the most widespread anthropogenic impacts on marine ecosystems. How the development of measurable metrics of the resultant ecosystem effects has become an important aspect of fisheries management; View that the extent to which ecosystems models are able to make meaningful predictions has not yet been fully addressed; Evaluation of ecosystem effects of fisheries; Assessment of impacts of fishing on the whole ecosystem; Results indicating no model formulation provided coverage in all the areas necessary to cover the identified effects of fisheries; View that the ECOPATH with Ecosim family of models, the European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model (ERSEM) and the Anderson & Ursin multispecies extension to the Beverton & Holt model all seem likely to yield good insights; Suggestion that consideration must be given to explicitly incorporate spatial factors and extrinsic forcing functions, such as climate in further developing these models.