Gloucester Community Development Corporation

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Gloucester Community Development Corporation
2
The Team

• Our Client
• Dr. Carmine Gorga, Executive Director GCDC
• Joe Sinagra, Fishermen
• Dr. Steve Kelleher, Marine Institute
  Massachusetts
• Dr. Damon Cummings, former Professor of
  hydrodynamics
• and control theory at MIT
• MIT
• Jeroen Struben, PhD Student
• SangHyun Lee, M.S Student Information Technology
• Peter Otto, PhD Student UAlbany

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Outline

• Challenges
• Background
• Problem Statement
• The Dynamics in the System
• Insights Gained

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Challenges

• You cannot build a model without a good
  understanding of the system you are going to
  simulate
• Jim Hines 2002

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Now What?

• To establish a commercialized fisheries operation
  Gloucester Fish, Inc. that utilizes a novel
  process that extracts fairly pure protein from
  underutilized fish species to potentially
  increase their value in an effort to revitalize
  the present fishing industry in Gloucester.

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Surimi?
A substitute for crab meat.
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Surimi Market

• Total market 760,000 metric tons, growing at 10
  20 per year
• Japan represents 60 of the market
• Desired output for Gloucesters Surimi factory is
  10,000 metric tons
• A lot of questions

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Problem Statement Objective

• The decline of traditional fish species and the
  curtailing of fishing efforts by the Government
  require the fishing industry of Gloucester to
  identify alternative resources to sustain their
  industry
• A Surimi factory harvesting fast renewable
  fish stock should compensate for the missing
  revenues from traditional ground fish until their
  stock returns to a sustainable level

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Problem recognition a response to a downward
spiral

• Dynamics of Total Potential for harvesting is
  defined by the combined availability of and
  capacity for pelagics and ground fish

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Consequential Questions

• What is the impact of a Surimi factory on the
  Fishing Community of Gloucester?
• Does the factory attract enough partners to
  establish a co-operation?
• Do we have the resources to achieve a sustainable
  factory output?

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Consequential Questions

• What is the impact of a Surimi factory on the
  Fishing Community of Gloucester?
• Does the factory attract enough partners to
  establish a co-operation?
• Do we have the resources to achieve a sustainable
  factory output?

Community
Factory
Resources
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A general Insight

• For fishing with a sustainable Ground Fish
  stock,
• it would be a prerequisite to have a possibility
  to process these Ground Fish within the Pelagics
  factory and harvest them by fishing partners

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Insight 2 Attractiveness to Partner is often
Worse before Better

• Implication
• Manage expectations of a highly volatile and
  responsive industry is crucial for sustainable
  business

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Insight 3a The dynamics of balancing resources
Ground Fish Dynamics
Maximum Net Total Biomass per Time Unit
Normalized Net Births Per Time Unit
Fractional Net Birth per Time Unit
1
Normalized Population
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Insight 3a The dynamics of balancing resources
Ground Fish Dynamics
Normalized Net Births Per Time Unit
Fractional Net Birth per Time Unit
?
HUnstable
HStable
Normalized Population
1
Stable Higher Yield Higher absolute Harvest Rate
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Insight 3a The dynamics of balancing resources
Ground Fish Dynamics

• so far for theory
• Can we balance the reductions in ground fish
  pressure with value added pelagics harvesting?

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Insight 3b The complexity of balancing
resources goes far beyond availability of
additional resources

• The following elements have a large impact on the
  success of sustainability in this complex system
  system
• Shapes of actual resource dynanics curves, e.g.
  what is span of control?!
• Switching flexiblity (factory and boats) and
  short response times
• Alignment of policies with behavior responses to
  changing stocks
• Attractivess by fishermen for catching pelagics
  and ground fish
• Future demand for Surimi
• Attractiveness by external harvesting to fish for
  specific resources
• It is recommended to study those dynamics more in
  depth

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Insights from the Project

• Even a fish stock with perceived unlimited
  resources is volatile when a certain threshold is
  reached
• Looking ahead to understand potential pitfalls
  has never been done before
• Visualizing the connections between the variables
  helped us to better understand the dynamics in
  the system
• Risk of detailed models risk of noisy
  information