| Abstract: | We consider the effect of sudden large, randomly occurring density dependent disasters on the optimal harvest policy and optimal expected return for an exploited population. The population is assumed to grow logistically with disasters occurring on a time scale very short compared to the natural growth scale. The case of a density dependent disaster frequency is also treated. Stochastic dynamic programming is used in the optimization. For a set of realistic field data it is found that random effects typically have a significant effect on both optimal return and optimal effort levels. The effect of density dependence is far more pronounced for optimal return than for optimal effort levels. |
