An ecological economic model is traditionally based both on an ecological model and an
economic model of the fishery. The social objective is to maximize the present value of the
profit of the involved fishers over a certain time horizon subject to the ecological model.
Ecological economic models have evolved largely on the ecological part. Ecological models
began early in the 20th century in the form of population models and were expanded midcentury
by the addition of systems analysis and ecosystem modelling (Lauenroth et al.
2003). In particular, population modelling was originally introduced by Verhulst (1838),
and system analysis was introduced by Lotka (1925) and Volterra (1926) in the form of a
natural predator–prey model (Billard 1977; Beryman 1992; Renshaw 1993; Eichner &
Pethig 2006). The Lotka-Volterra model has been modified and applied to fisheries by numerous
authors such as May et al. (1979), Flaaten (1988, 1990, 1998), and Yodris (1994).
The Lotka-Volterra model was also generalized to communities or food web models (Polovina
1984; Tu & Wilman 1992; Christensen et al. 2004; Pastor 2008).