Blue sea and the Tragedy of the Commons

If I remember well, the first time I came across the concept of the tragedy of the commons was during my Game Theory classes when undertaking my MSc in Economics. The tragedy of the commons describes the situation where individuals act according to their self interest and deplete the resources through their collective action. In this case, the "common resource" were mussels and the individuals were people who, compelled by the tradition of going "fishing" on Good Friday, came from everywhere to Praia Azul and caught as many kg of mussels as they could only in a few hours. As the weather was reasonably good, this meant hundreds of people on the rocks and hundreds of kg of mussels caught. Although the amount and size allowed per person have been finally regulated in 2014 (3kg per person per day and >5cm), with absolutely no control from the authorities, the tragedy happened. The excessive capture of mussels in a single day damages its population and also the food web, endangering other sea species that are dependent on this resource to survive.