Modeling energy flow in a large Neotropical reservoir: a tool do evaluate fishing and stability

Abstract

Recently, there is an increasing perception that the ecosystem approach gives important insights to support fisheries stock assessment and management. This paper aims to quantify energy flows in the Itaipu Reservoir (Brazil) and to simulate increase of the fishing effort of some species, using Ecopath with Ecosim software, which could allow inferences on stability. Therefore, two steady-state Itaipu models were built (1983-87 and 1988-92). Results showed that: a) there are no differences between models, and results on aging trends do not vary over time indicating that fishery does not alter the ecosystem as a whole; b) results of fisheries simulations are approximate to mono-specific stock assessment for the same species and periods; c) many authors believe that tropical ecosystems are environments where biotic and abiotic oscillations are annual and sometimes unexpected, but the results found for the Itaipu Reservoir indicate that stability was met after 16 years.