Balancing maximum sustainable yield and ecological resilience in an exploited two-predator one-prey system

In this paper, we consider a two-predator one-prey system to determine the feedback of exploitation in individual as well as joint population levels. As balancing yield with resilience is highly essential for the conservation of species in the marine ecosystem, here we measure both the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) and resilience simultaneously. Then we investigate both the trade-offs and synergies among maximum yield, conservation, and resilience that emerge from different harvesting plans. It is found that for single species harvesting, a prey species-oriented system is capable of producing more yield in compare to any predator-oriented system but for resilience, a prey species-oriented system is far behind the others. In the case of joint harvesting of all the species, it is observed that the first predator-oriented system has a better ability to absorb the disturbances than the other cases. The correlation between yield and resilience at the MSY level is studied in all the cases. It is further observed that the increase of intraspecific competition in the predator decreases the risk of sustainability. In this way, this study may be helpful for fishery management to fulfill their goals without affecting the ecosystem's health in the long run.