Journal of Marine Science: Research & Development
Open Access

Research Article

Assessing the Impact of Temperature and Chlorophyll Variations on the Fluctuations of Sardine Abundance in Al-Hoceima (South Alboran Sea)

¹National Institute for Fisheries Research, Oceanography Department, Casablanca, Morocco

²Institute of Atmosphere and Climate Sciences, National Research Council, Roma, Italy

Corresponding Author:

Abdellaoui B
National Institute for Fisheries Research
Oceanography Department, Casablanca, Morocco
Tel: 05 22940773
E-mail: Byounes2011@gmail.com

Received Date: June 09, 2017; Accepted Date: September 21, 2017; Published Date: September 25, 2017

Citation: Abdellaoui B, Berraho A, Falcini F, Santoleri JR, Sammartino M, et al. (2017) Assessing the Impact of Temperature and Chlorophyll Variations on the Fluctuations of Sardine Abundance in Al-Hoceima (South Alboran Sea). J Marine Sci Res Dev 7:239. doi: 10.4172/2155-9910.1000239

Copyright: © 2017 Abdellaoui B, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Landings of small pelagic fish in Moroccan Mediterranean Sea show large fluctuations and trends, a fact that has a considerable socio-economic impact. These changes are often related to the impact of the environmental conditions on recruitment processes. We investigate fluctuations of the sardine’s abundance at one of the most important fishing areas of the Moroccan Mediterranean Sea (i.e., Al-Hoceima region) and try to assess the impact of environmental changes on the availability of pelagic fish in this area. In these regards, we analyzed Seasonal and Trends Loess’ (STL) decomposition of time series between 2008 and 2015 of catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) data along with environmental parameters (i.e., sea surface temperature and chlorophyll-a) from remote sensing and we applied nonlinear models (GAM). Results show an inverse relationship between fluctuations of sardine CPUE and sea surface temperature. Nonlinear relationships confirm that the temperature is the most important parameter affecting abundance, whereas chlorophyll-a, is generally, weakly correlated to the CPUE data at monthly and seasonal level variations, except for annual trends. The analysis also shows positive trend of chlorophyll-a, from 2003 and a negative one starting from 2011, revealing an inter-annual variability that support fish landings fluctuations. Modeling based on the relationships between the CPUE and temperature/chlorophyll-a, allowed better prediction of the sardine abundance in the Al-Hoceima fishing area (South Alboran Sea).

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