The Peruvian Upwelling Ecosystem: Linking Ecology and Society

The Peruvian fishing sector and policies have through the last fifty years focused on the anchoveta, which forms the basis for the world’s biggest fishery. The Peruvian upwelling ecosystem is, however, diverse and productive, it harbors many other important species, and in addition to the anchoveta reduction fisheries it forms the basis for a very significant seafood industry. With this in mind, we have developed a management model of the Peruvian EEZ, which combines ecological food web modeling with economic and social value chain analysis in order to gain a more complete description of contribution that the fishing sector makes to the Peruvian economy. We use the combination of food web and network analysis to address questions related to ecosystem-level tradeoffs with a focus on how to develop management systems that are robust to the natural variability that is inherent to this ecosystems, and which balances the ecological impact of fisheries with the need to ensure that the important economic and social contribution of the fisheries is maintained in a sustainable manner.