The paper is concerned with the optimal harvesting of a marine park, which is described by a parabolic heat equation with Neumann boundary conditions and a nonlinear source term. We consider a cost functional, which is linear with respect to the control; hence the optimal solution can belong to the class of measure-valued control strategies. For each control function, we prove existence and stability estimates for solutions of the parabolic equation. Moreover, we prove the existence of an optimal solution. Finally, some numerical simulations conclude the paper.