We commonly see several types of dynamic instability following small perturbations in fishing mortality rates (to get away from initial Ecopath equilibrium):
Such patterns are not particularly common in fisheries time series, so unless you have data to support a cyclic prediction, you should probably adjust the model parameters to get rid of it.
Predator-prey and simplification effects can usually be eliminated by reducing the predation vulnerability parameters (Ecosim Vulnerabilities form?, set values to 4 or less).
We know of at least four common mechanisms that can decrease the vulnerability parameters so as to create stabilizing and the appearance of ?ratio-dependent? or ?bottom-up? control of consumption rates:
These mechanisms are so ubiquitous that any reader with aquatic natural history experience might wonder why anyone would ever assume a mass-action, random encounter model (vulnerabilities = 100 in Vulnerabilities form) in the first place.
Methods for dealing with stock-recruitment instability are discussed in the help section on using Ecosim to study compensation?. Generally the simplest solutions are to check (and reduce if needed) cannibalism rates, set higher foraging time adjustment rates (Ecosim Group info? form) for juvenile pools and reduce vulnerabilities of prey to juvenile fishes (Vulnerabilities form?).
Numerical instabilities (chatter, oscillations of growing amplitude) occur mainly in Ecospace. They are avoided in Ecosim by only doing time dynamic integration of change for pools that can change relatively slowly. In Ecospace, the only remedy for chatter is to reduce the prediction time step (from 12/year default value, sometimes very low values such as 0.05 year are required for stability). In extreme cases, it might be necessary to ?fool? Ecosim/Ecospace? by implicitly moving to a shorter time step for all dynamics, which you can do by dividing every Ecopath input time rate (P/B, Q/B) with the same factor.