Foreword

French Frigate Shoals (FFS) is a coral reef atoll located in the remote region of the Hawaiian Islands Archipelago. In the late 1970s it was the focus of marine scientists studying all components of the marine ecosystem from phytoplankton to seabirds and tiger sharks. In 1978 I was hired to model the energy flow for this coral reef ecosystem based on the findings from this research. While this was the age of single species models, I was aware of two efforts in temperate regions developing ecosystem models for well-studied systems. Unfortunately for us these models were very parameter-intensive, far beyond what we could estimate at FFS. Thus, I developed an approach termed as Ecopath to estimate the biomasses and the energy flow for the species groups that comprised the atoll ecosystem in our data-limited situation. The Ecopath model and its application to FFS was published in Coral Reefs in 1984.

While I was developing this model I received enthusiastic encouragement from Dr. Daniel Pauly. Where some critics noted that Ecopath was too simplistic to realistically model the complexity of a coral reef ecosystem, Dr. Pauly saw its simplicity as a strength that would allow it to be applied to many ecosystems around the world and he began doing just that. It wasn’t long before Dr. Pauly had the good fortune to develop a collaboration with the two co-authors of this book, Dr. Villy Christensen and Dr. Carl Walters, to build a much more user-friendly and temporally and spatially dynamic version of the model that became known as Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE). Over the years, Dr. Christensen has been a leader in working to continually improve EwE and develop a global community of EwE users and developers. Due to his efforts and the utility of this modeling approach, the number of scientists that have received training in EwE exceeds 3200 coming from more than 100 countries – it’s truly a global initiative.

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to explore the ecosystem and fisheries impacts from both climate change and fishing strategy by driving an EwE model for the central Pacific with the output of an earth system model. It was very impressive to see what a versatile and powerful tool EwE has become. This book, written by lead EwE developers, is a timely and comprehensive presentation of this versatile modeling approach and its many applications for the benefit of current and future ecologists, resource managers, and policy makers.

Jeffrey Polovina, Ph.D.

Kailua, HI 96734