Applying the Safe Operating Space (SOS) Approach to Sustainable Commercial Fishing under Varying Lake Levels and Littoral Zone Conditions

Successful management of lake ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide necessitates ecosystem‐based management. The application of ecosystem‐based management can assist in achieving sustainable management of the ecosystem to ensure continued and sustainable supply of ecosystem services such as fisheries. One concept for defining sustainable fishing is the Safe Operating Space (SOS). In our study, we apply the Ecopath with Ecosim suite of models to predict the SOS required for the management of a commercial fishery. We use the Lake Kinneret (Israel) ecosystem as a case study to illustrate the approach by developing an Ecospace model of the lake and incorporating the spatio‐temporal framework and varying environmental conditions. We test, and demonstrate, the methodology for developing a SOS for a commercial fish population that can be implemented by lake managers elsewhere and illustrate it's use by defining example target values of biomass (e.g., 200 and 250 tons) and catch (e.g., 125 tons/year). Our results show that the SOS for a given target can be defined by a range of fishing efforts and vegetation cover in the lake as a function of lake level. The complexity in defining the actual values highlight the benefit of the approach we present here.