Towards possible fishery management strategies in a newly impounded man-made lake in Thailand

The aim of this paper is to study and quantitatively describe the trophic relationships in a newly impounded South East Asian reservoir (Pasak Jolasid near Bangkok, Thailand), for the management of the multispecies fishery of this reservoir. Ecopath was used to construct a mass-balance model, which is considered to be the first step in summarizing ecological and biological information in a coherent framework through trophic networks in the lake. Various socio-economic and ecological objectives were examined, using Ecosim, for an optimization of the economic value of the ecosystem, the job opportunities associated with various fishing gears, and the abundance of each fish group for their economic or intrinsic ecological value strategies. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of fisheries management of the ecosystem. The Ecospace routine allowed some hypothesis to be assumed on the future spatial distribution of the fish groups and the fishing effort; the potential importance of the preservation of littoral zones is particularly emphasized and the implications for water use of the dam are discussed.