Development of marine ecosystem model around the Korean Peninsula

Coastal and Offshore fishery was catches at 1.5 million tons per year in the 1990s, but since 2010, catches have dropped sharply to 1.05 million tons. It is time to secure technology for assessing changes in fisheries environment due to changes in marine environment such as climate change, and forecasting technologies for distribution of major fish species and resources in order to establish long-term and short-term response and adaptation strategies for offshore fishery fluctuations. Therefore, we will implement a comprehensive offshore ecosystem change prediction system based on food chain for sustainable fishery ecosystem maintenance and scientific management of fishery resources.

Various models have been developed and are being used worldwide to reproduce and predict marine environments and ecosystems. As a way to build a Korean marine ecosystem model, there are a plan to introduce an excellent overseas model to improve its function and performance in consideration of domestic conditions and to develop its own. As a result of the comprehensive review, the model adopted a method to improve the model so as to introduce the excellent overseas model first, and secure the function appropriate to the domestic reality and characteristics rather than the self-development.

ATLANTIS and EwE were selected as a marine food-web based ecosystem model by comparing and analyzing functions of prediction model of changes in ecosystem currently in use globally. NEMURO, BSS, and primary productivity estimation models were added to link input and output data by model for effective operation and higher degree of production.

The prediction system has already been deployed with biochemical and oceanic circulation modules, and initial input conditions of the prediction model are currently being established, including calculation of biomass by age, identification of the structure of the food-web, and selection of physiological and ecological parameters by functional group. In this study, we are going to introduce and discuss the process of expanding from biochemical circulation to ecosystem and using it to predict fishery resources.