On the coupling between climate, hydrography and recruitment variability of fishery resources off West Greenland

• Main Authors: Erik Buch, Mads Hvid Nielsen
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: biomass; climate; cod; shrimp; fishery; Greenland; salinity; temperature; variability; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.526.7096; http://ocean.dmi.dk/staff/mhri/Docs/Buch_et_al_ices2003.pdf

240. (Proceedings of the ICES Symposium on Hydrobiological variability in the ICES area, 1990-1999.) A review of the past 50 years of climatic conditions off West Greenland is given. We find large variability in the atmospheric and oceanographic conditions as well as in the fish stocks. A positive relationship is found between the hydrographic conditions expressed by the water temperature and the fish recruitment of cod and redfish whereas the recruitment of shrimp and halibut seems to react positively to lower temperatures. Observed shifts in the hydrographic conditions during the second half of the 1990s indicate that a change in the fish stock environment may be expected in the coming years. Relationships between the past variations in fisheries resources, hydrographic conditions, and the large-scale climatic conditions, expressed by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), strongly supports the incorporation of environmental variability in prediction models for fish stock recruitment and thereby in the assessment of the fisheries resources.