Most natural resource management issues are controversial. Typically social, economic, and a variety of environmental objectives need to be considered when identifying a preferred option from among alternative management strategies. The identification of best options is also technically challenging because of the lack of scientific tools to inform resource managers of future responses/impacts of alternative management actions, and to deal with many and possibly conflicting objectives. The management of recreational fishing is such a typical example, where so far most management strategies tend to be ad hoc, and are seldom supported by scientific modelling and evaluation. Arbitrary management decisions lead to inefficient utilization of resource stocks. Research and evaluation tools that can assist resource managers assess the full range of potential impacts of management changes and select the best options against complex criteria are needed to improve decision making. This paper proposes a decision support system which aims at greatly improving stakeholder dialogue and decision making for recreational fishing management. The system consists of two main components: an integrated agent-based model for simulating recreational fishing behavior and reef ecosystem dynamics; and an evaluation model based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) together with a technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The latter is responsible for assessing alternative strategies based on the simulation outputs generated by the former. The agent-based simulation (ABS) model can be applied to other environments, but in this particular case it focuses on recreational fishing behaviour within a coral reef ecosystem. Recreational fishing behaviour specifications are based on empirical models estimated using survey data. The marine reef environment is modelled as a system with different trophic levels identifying algal and coral growth as well as two types of fish (piscivores and herbivores). The integrated model is able to keep track of not only biophysical feedback effects, but also complex socio-economic benefits or non-market values that are reflected in market transactions. In the outcome evaluation component of the system, the AHP is used to structure and rate all related criteria, and the fuzzy-TOPSIS method is used to obtain final rankings in terms of simulated socioeconomic and biophysical outcomes. Preliminary results using the proposed system to assess a set of management strategies for recreational fishing in the Ningaloo Marine Park, an iconic coral reef system in Western Australia, illustrate the usefulness of the solution.
