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REEFGAME is a computer-assisted role-playing game that explores the interactions among management strategies, livelihood options, and ecological degradation in subsistence fishing communities. The tool has been successfully used in the Philippines and a variety of student workshops. In the field, REEFGAME operated as a two-way learning tool, helping local fishers better understand their collective impacts on the marine ecosystem and providing researchers with insights into fisher livelihood strategies. This demonstrates the game’s ability to serve as powerful springboard for social learning and discussion among stakeholders, while providing useful scientific insights into decision-making processes. Although not specifically designed for the purpose, REEFGAME has also been used in the university setting to facilitate student engagement and demonstrate a range of social and ecological concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An agent-based model was used to evaluate the response of a two-species fish community to fishing boat exploration strategies, namely: boats following high-yield boats (Cartesian); boats fishing at random sites (stochast-random); and boats fishing at least exploited sites (stochast-pressure). At low fishing pressure, the stochast-random mode yielded a high average catch per boat while sustaining fish biomass. At high fishing pressure, the Cartesian mode was more effective. For the Cartesian strategy, fish biomass exhibited four distinct behaviors with increasing number of boats. In the first phase, the fish biomass dropped with increasing number of boats due to a corresponding rise in biomass extraction. Rapid exploitation occurred in the second phase, when two or more boats occupied the same initial area, that led to the faster abandonment of those sites which then underwent biomass recovery. In the third phase, adding more boats resulted in a fluctuating stock biomass, where the combined effects of initial spatial distribution of boats and rapid localization led to either full stock recovery when boats were eventually confined to a single location due to spillovers, or stock extirpation when the entire area became fully occupied. Beyond the third phase, stock extirpation was assured. In order to break the pattern of localization (bandwagon effect), we introduced stochast-random intruders in a Cartesian-dominated fishery. Adding a single intruder changed the patchy-structured stock biomass pattern of a purely Cartesian fishery to a uniformly explored stock biomass pattern because of the additional spatial information provided by the intruder. Consequently, the average catch per boat increased but at the expense of a disproportionate decline in equilibrium biomass. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses challenges in a global hot spot for marine diversity, called the Coral Triangle (CT). The CT includes the seas of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippine, Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste, collectively called the CT6, and is a source of seafood-derived protein and micronutrients. Topics include the five goals of the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries, and Food Security (CTI-CFF), overfishing in the CT, and three indicators representing the socioeconomic and environmental governance capacity of the CT countries in addressing issues related to coral reefs ecosystems, fisheries, and food security, including gross domestic product (GDP), the Human Development Index (HDI), and the World Governance Indicator (WGI).