The effect of environmental changes in the Galician sardine fishery

Annex 6The highest catches of the Iberian sardine stock are taken from the southern part of Galician waters (NW corner of the Iberian Peninsula) and northern Portugal. Landings are mainly composed of younger fish, which reflects the proximity of the main recruitment area to the fishery grounds. Since 1978 there has been an improvement in the knowledge of the biology and stock dynamics of sardine around the Atlantic Iberian waters. In the last decade a consecutive years with poor recruitments result in a depletion of stock below limits previously recorded. The recruitment processes seem to be driven by oceanographic (local) and climatic (global) events, this dependence on both phenomena may explain the fluctuations on the landings in the sardine fisheries in Atlantic Iberian waters. Given the dependence of the fishery in this area on the strength of the recruitment, different relationship between biotic components (spawning stock size, recruitment, landings and recruitment landings) and abiotic: climatic indices (NAO-winter, Gulf Stream and AMO) and local oceanographic coastal events (upwelling and poleward current) were analysed. In the analysis of the abiotic series in the period (1978–2005), there appears to be a shift in the general trend in 1995. In addition at the end of the nineties several consecutive years with poor recruitment result in a depletion of the stock below limits previously recorded as well as changes in the distribution area. Before the shift was observed the recruitment variability could be explain by the environmental variables, but since then the correlation is poor