The Humboldt Current Large Marine Ecosystem (HCLME), a Challenging Scenario for Modelers and Their Contribution for the Manager

The Humboldt Current Large Marine Ecosystem (HCLME) is a salient feature of the southeastern Pacific, along the South American coast of Chile and Peru. It is associated with coastal upwelling which generates a very productive ecosystem. However, due to a variety of interconnected biophysical processes at diverse temporal and spatial scales, production varies greatly in time and space. The interplay of the biophysical environment, biological processes involving valuable resources on international markets, the socio-political context, and some management decisions, has shaped the daily life of the HCLME fisheries, marked by booms and busts, offering wealth for short periods of time, followed by collapses. These collapses are generally interpreted as the consequence of a lack of appropriate management, so that a variety of increasingly stricter regulations have been implemented. Nevertheless, this has not significantly reduced the temporal variability of the fisheries landings, which is broadly characterized by a peaks and troughs pattern. While the HCLME is one of the most productive marine ecosystems on Earth, along with a great biophysical and biological variability, it is also a huge but fragile exploited social-ecological system. Modelers can help to understand how to continuously adapt in order to deal with recurrent fisheries “crises,” which, as we are beginning to learn, may simply be an expression of the variability inherent in this complex system. Furthermore, it is essential to increase our capacity to adapt to the expected consequences of climate change.