Sustainable yield in fisheries

The sustainable yield of natural capital is the ecological yield that can be extracted without reducing the base of capital itself, i.e. the surplus required to maintain ecosystem services at the same or increasing level over time. This yield usually varies over time with the needs of the ecosystem to maintain itself, e.g. a forest that has recently suffered a blight or flooding or fire will require more of its own ecological yield to sustain and re-establish a mature forest. While doing so, the sustainable yield may be much less.

In fisheries, the basic natural capital, or original population, diminishes due to extraction (fishing), while production from breeding and natural growth increases. Therefore, the sustainable yield is the balance at which the natural capital, combined with its production, can provide an adequate yield. Quantifying sustainable yield is challenging due to the dynamic ecological conditions and other harvesting-unrelated factors that cause variations in both natural capital and its productivity.

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