Title
Investigating relationships between albacore tuna (Thunnus alalunga) CPUE and prey distribution in the Bay of Biscay
Date Issued
01 July 2010
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Institut de Recherche pour le développement
Abstract
The Bay of Biscay in the northeast Atlantic is an important feeding zone for juvenile albacore tuna (Thunnus alalunga) during their summer migration northwards. Spatial distribution and abundance of their potential prey [planktonic organisms, anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) and other small pelagics] were investigated in the southeast Bay of Biscay during acoustic surveys in autumn from 2003 to 2005. The relationships between albacore tuna catch per unit of effort (CPUE), and prey abundance and sea surface temperature (SST) were studied at different spatiotemporal scales. We observed positive and significant correlations between albacore tuna CPUE and anchovy abundance and total prey abundance, at different spatial scales. However, in 2003, a year characterised by extreme temperatures compared to the other years of this study, the relationship between CPUE and prey abundance was much weaker. Instead, we found a significant negative correlation with SST. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.
Start page
105
End page
114
Volume
86
Issue
February 1
Language
English
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-77957128552
Source
Progress in Oceanography
ISSN of the container
00796611
DOI of the container
10.1016/j.pocean.2010.04.006
Source funding
Department of Agriculture and Fisheries of the Basque Government
Ministry of Agriculture, Fishery and Food
Spanish Government
Technological Centre Foundation
Sponsor(s)
This work was supported by the JUVENA project funded by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries of the Basque Government and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fishery and Food (MAPA), of the Spanish Government and a Grant to AL. (Technological Centre Foundation). We would like to thank all the skippers that kindly provided their logbooks and the crews of the commercial fishing vessels that took part in the JUVENA cruises. We are also grateful to the technical staff of AZTI (Carlota Perez, Iñaki Rico) for their help in the data processing and analyses, especially to Udane Martinez. I wish to thank Drs. M. Woillez and F. Dufour for their advices during this work. We would also like to express our gratitude to Dr. Xabier Irigoien and Andres Uriarte (AZTI) for their invaluable discussions. M. Kensington is thanked for revising the English in this manuscript. This paper is contribution No. 462 from AZTI-TECNALIA (Marine and Food Research).
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus