HR: 0800h
AN: OS51A-1293    [Abstracts]
TI: Sea Surface Temperature and the Brown Shrimp (Farfantepenaeus Aztecus) Population on the Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas Continental Shelves
AU: * Li, J
EM: jli@ocean.fsu.edu
AF: Department of Oceanography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306
AU: Clarke, A J
EM: clarke@ocean.fsu.edu
AF: Department of Oceanography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306
AB: Analysis of the Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program-Gulf of Mexico (SEAMAP-GM) summer and fall trawl survey data covering the Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas continental shelves for the period 1987-2000 shows that the annual number n and weight w of the brown shrimp per trawl is positively correlated with annual sea surface temperature (SST) averaged over the continental shelves. Monthly SST correlations with the annual shrimp data are highest in April and May. Past work suggested possible reason for this: juvenile brown shrimp, which mainly develop from postlarvae in coastal estuaries in April and May, grow faster in warmer water and are therefore more likely to escape predators. Since the juvenile shrimp population is a good predictor of the adult shelf shrimp population, and since the estuarine and shelf SST are closely linked, it is reasonable that April and May shelf SST should be positively correlated with the number and weight of brown shrimp per trawl. Hindcasts is made using the simple linear statistical prediction model $n=\alpha + \beta \cdot SSTA $ , where SSTA is the anomalous April-May departure of SST from the annual cycle. The cross-verified correlation between model and observed n is $r=0.77$ . A similar model for w gave $r=0.79$ . In 2004, the model predicts that the number and weight of the brown shrimp should be less than those in 1999 and 2000, but still larger than the average values from 1987 to 2000 (5.92% above normal for the number and 5.64% above for the weight).
DE: 4842 Modeling
DE: 4219 Continental shelf processes
DE: 4223 Descriptive and regional oceanography
DE: 4243 Marginal and semienclosed seas
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting