Fishing for Food and Profit

Future generations will not be able to enjoy Earth's renewable resources if we mismanage them now. Using quadratic functions and graph interpretation, we shall seek general principles related to protecting renewable resources.

Our focus will be fish populations, but the same principles apply to other renewable resources. We will look at two approaches to managing a resource. First we can manage the resource so as to maximize the total yearly harvest. Second we can manage the resource so as to maximize the total yearly profit gained from harvesting. "Open access" means that the resource is not managed; that is, anyone can harvest whatever they can catch. We will compare the implications of the two approaches to managing resources to the typical policy of open access. We will find that open access often puts the resource at risk, with the result that the harvest remains small, and there is little profit for the people who do the fishing.