Trade-offs of managing Arctic predator harvest instability in fluctuating oceans

Sustainable human exploitation of marine living resources stems from a delicate balance between short-term yield stability and long-term population persistence to achieve socioeconomic and conservation goals. However, imperfect knowledge of how oscillations in ecosystem processes regulate fluctuations in exploited populations can obscure the risk of missing management targets. We illustrate how the harvest policy to suppress short-term yield fluctuation inadvertently disrupts population cycles and yield stability of exploited, long-lived predators under stochastically fluctuating environmental forces (food availability and regional climate) using Northeast Arctic (NEA) cod ( Gadus morhua , an apex predatory fish) as a case study. We use a stochastic, empirically parameterized multispecies model to simulate NEA cod population dynamics through life-history processes; Barents Sea capelin ( Mallotus villosus , a pelagic forage fish) modulates cod productivity through density-dependent cannibalism–predation dynamics, whereas sea temperature regulates cod consumption, growth, and recruitment. We first test how capelin and sea temperature fluctuations regulate patterns in cod yield fluctuation and then quantitatively assess how fishing pattern designed to limit yield between-year variance (within 50–5%) perturbs cod population–catch dynamics. Simulations suggest that capelin and temperature interactively contribute to shifting cyclic patterns in cod yield fluctuation primarily through cod cannibalism–predation dynamics. Wavelet analyses further show that muffling yield variance (30 % or less) reshapes the cyclicity (shorter period and greater amplitude) of cod population size and demography, thereby becoming progressively unsynchronized with fishing pressure. Our work reveals unintended consequences of managing transient dynamics of fished populations: the interworking of population cycle destabilized by inadvertently intensifying fishing pressure, amplifying yield fluctuation and, in turn, elevating overharvest risk when not accounting for compounded effects of stochasticity in ecologically connected processes. These policy implications underscore the need for an ecosystem approach to designing ecologically sound management measures to safely harvest shared living resources while achieving socioeconomic security in increasingly more dynamic oceans in the Arctic and elsewhere. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.