Chaos theory and its impact on Tuna species: logistic equation and its implications
Student name: Ms Ankita Malhotra
Guide: Mr Anandajit Goswami
Year of completion: 2015
Host Organisation: The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI), New Delhi
Abstract: Chaos and randomness are words that we keep on hearing quite often now a days. The present day world has moved from accurate prediction to the world of unpredictability with words like randomness and chaos occupying most of our lives. Most of the processes that we observe and see around are essentially nonlinear in nature. One of the most interesting ways in which nonlinear systems behave is Chaos. Though each step in the system can be described mathematically yet there might not be any way to predict or govern the behavior of the system after a point of time. These systems display the property of sensitivity to initial conditions meaning a minute change in the initial conditions of the systems might alter the behavior of the system in such a manner that it might turn out be completely unpredictable in nature.
In the light of this knowledge, an effort was made to connect the idea of Chaos to Fisheries as despite being management for a lot of years there was a huge lag between the expected results and actual situation at hand .Taking this as a starting point of my thesis, an effort was made to tried observe the behavior of Tuna species in Japan. After using various tools to explore and figure out the nature of chaos, the work tried connecting my results to suggest certain policy issues. Fisheries and most of the natural systems around us will always remain subject to fluctuations however the aim of my thesis is to figure out a sustainable approach for fisheries management in the long run.
