Sarah Simons

• PhD in Biology
• Researcher at Thünen Institute

Designing effective management plans requires understanding fishers' behaviour under that plan, because fishers change their behaviour in response to economic and management incentives, which in turn will lead to different fishery outcomes. This study presents a modelling framework for management strategy evaluations which takes into account the re...

Although there exists an EU-Norway long-term management plan for North Sea saithe, including a catch regulation, the spawning stock biomass has declined in the last few years, recruitment has been below average since 2006 and growth rates are low. Moreover, catch rates used as a proxy of stock abundance in stock assessment, are believed to decline...

There is growing interest in bio-economic models as tools for understanding pathways of fishery behaviour, in order to assess the impact on natural resources. Based on 'FishRent', a modelling approach is presented that integrates economics of the fleet, the impact of fishing on stock development and their spatio-temporal interplay. The simulation o...

There is growing interest in bioeconomic models as tools for understanding pathways of fishery behaviour in order to assess the impact of alternative policies on natural resources. A model system is presented that combines stochastic age-structured population dynamics with complex fisheries economics. Explicitly, the economic response of fleet segm...

Considering the critical issue of overexploited stocks due to overfishing, the EU's Data Collection Framework (DCF) was established. Within the DCF, member states collect and analyze data relevant to sustainable fisheries management. To evaluate the status of fisheries, it is necessary to categorize fishing fleets into fleet segments. However, the...

We applied the bioeconomic fisheries simulation and optimization model FISHRENT to data of North Sea demersal fishing fleets to research the effects of climate change on the profitability and effort distribution of those fleets. Our work was conducted within the Horizon 2020 project FutureMARES (www.futuremares.eu) and we applied the climate change...

The mackerel (Scomber scombrus) stock is one of the commercially most important pelagic species in the Northeast Atlantic, being targeted by various nations. Environmental and stock size changes caused a stock expansion after 2007, initiating a yet unresolved dispute between the European Union, United Kingdom, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islan...

Spatially explicit bio-economic models that are age-structured and dynamic become increasingly important, being used for different purposes including spatial management measure evaluation. One of the reasons why those complex models are still rare is the extensive data need. FishRent incorporates highly resolved economic information of multiple fle...

Environmental, political, and economic conditions influence fishermen’s decisions, which in turn have consequences on the profitability of fishing fleets. We applied the bio-economic model FishRent to understand the response of eight fleets operating in the Northeast Atlantic mackerel and North Sea autumn spawning herring fishery to a number of sce...

Commission Decision of 25 February 2016 setting up a Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, C(2016) 1084, OJ C 74, 26.2.2016, p. 4–10. The Commission may consult the group on any matter relating to marine and fisheries biology, fishing gear technology, fisheries economics, fisheries governance, ecosystem effects of fisheries, a...

Marine ecosystems evolve under many interconnected and area-specific pressures. To fulfil society's intensifying and diversifying needs while ensuring ecologically sustainable development, more effective marine spatial planning and broader-scope management of marine resources is necessary. Integrated ecological–economic fisheries models (IEEFMs) of...

Marine ecological change is likely to have serious potential economic consequences for coastal economies all over the world. This article reviews the current literature on the economic impacts of marine ecological change, as well as a number of recent contributions to this literature carried out under the VECTORS project. We focus on three main typ...

The aim of this study is to analyse the example of German fisheries in ‘North Western waters’ and the ‘North Sea to describe and discuss potential consequences of Brexit and draw generic conclusions for some the most important principles of the EU Common Fisheries Policy). Brexit will have significant effects on fisheries of 8 MS fishing in UK wate...

The relationship between fisheries and marine spatial planning (MSP) is still widely unsettled. While several scientific studies highlight the strong relation between fisheries and MSP, as well as ways in which fisheries could be included in MSP, the actual integration of fisheries into MSP often fails. In this article, we review the state of the a...

Transdisciplinary research that crosses disciplinary boundaries and includes stakeholder collaboration is increasingly being used to address pressing and complex socio-ecological challenges in the Anthropocene. In fisheries, we see transdisciplinary approaches being employed to address a range of challenges, including bycatch where fine-scale data...

Marine ecological change is likely to have serious potential economic consequences for coastal economies all over the world. This article reviews the current literature on the economic impacts of marine ecological change, as well as a number of recent contributions to this literature carried out under the VECTORS project. We focus on three main typ...