Modelling Cooperation between fishermen with a Cellular automaton. A framework for fishing effort spatial dynamics

In many fisheries sharing information between vessels is an important characteristic of fishermen's behaviour rarely modelled or analyzed. A Cellular Automaton is designed in an attempt to understand circumstances that favour group formation. The simulated world is toroidal with a static fishing resource distributed in patches. Movement decisions are random in the case of fishermen in a local scale. After a certain time interval, sharing information is possible between fishermen in a dynamic Moore's neighbourhood of cells at a broader scale and movement to adjacent areas may occur according to a set of rules. The dynamic neighbourhood is a novel concept defined in this work within the framework of Cellular Automata. Decision making by each fisherman is a function of the influence other fishermen (neighbours) exert on them as well as on personal knowledge, to form an opinion of the areas (cells) quality, and take action consequently.