Individual-Based Model Describes Behavioral Feedbacks between Anglers and Sportfish

Behavioral feedbacks between anglers and sportfish are widely recognized to be important in the management of sustainable and economically viable recreational fisheries. Quantifying these feedbacks empirically is difficult. Individual-based modeling has proven to be a powerful tool for assessing ecological processes that are difficult to quantify empirically. We used this computational-modeling form to simulate various assumptions associated with fishery-induced behavioral changes within an exploited fish population. We parameterized the angler agents using empirically collected, intensive creel survey data from a new reservoir in Eastern Nebraska. These simulations result in robust-emergent relationships, over many model iterations, between empirically represented anglers and hypothetical sportfish.  This provides a theoretical framework for in situ assessments of behavioral feedbacks between anglers and sportfish.