Alternative attractors in marine ecosystems: A comparative analysis of fishing effects

With the aid of Ecopath with Ecosim mass-balance model and perturbation by fishing, the existence of alternative attractors in marine ecosystems was explored. The ecosystem was investigated in the form of bottom-up, mixed and top-down control, respectively. Furthermore, fishery species were changed from wasp-waist to top predators. Thus, the effect of the trophic level to the existence of the alternative attractors was showed. The results proved that there were indeed alternative attractors in the studied ecosystems, and alternative attractors might be easier to appear from the systems with top-down control. As the fishing trophic level changed, the occurrence frequency of the alternative attractors changed slightly, but the models with alternative attractors changed significantly.