IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v417y2002i6886d10.1038_417275a.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Climatic influence on a marine fish assemblage

Author

Listed:
  • Martin J. Attrill

    (University of Plymouth)

  • Michael Power

    (University of Waterloo)

Abstract

Understanding the fluctuations in marine fish stocks is important for the management of fisheries, and attempts have been made to demonstrate links with oceanographic and climatic variability1,2,3, including the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)4,5. The NAO has been correlated with a range of long-term ecological measures6,7, including certain fish stocks8,9. Such environmental influences are most likely to affect susceptible juveniles10 during estuarine residency, as estuaries are critical juvenile nursery or over-wintering habitats11. Here we show that, during a 16-year period, climatic forcing (by means of the NAO) is consistently the most important parameter explaining variation in assemblage composition, abundance and growth of juvenile marine fish during estuarine residency. A possible mechanism for the effect of the NAO is a temperature differential between estuarine and marine waters that allows fish to facultatively exploit optimal thermal habitats. The connection has potentially important implications for the size and numbers of individuals recruited to the fishery, for understanding and predicting the composition of juvenile fish stocks using estuaries, and for the appropriate conservation of estuarine systems in relation to fish stocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin J. Attrill & Michael Power, 2002. "Climatic influence on a marine fish assemblage," Nature, Nature, vol. 417(6886), pages 275-278, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:417:y:2002:i:6886:d:10.1038_417275a
    DOI: 10.1038/417275a
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/417275a
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/417275a?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Achwak Benazza & Jonathan Selleslagh & Elsa Breton & Khalef Rabhi & Vincent Cornille & Mahmoud Bacha & Eric Lecuyer & Rachid Amara, 2015. "Environmental Control on Fish and Macrocrustacean Spring Community-Structure, on an Intertidal Sandy Beach," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(1), pages 1-19, January.
    2. Paloma Martín & Ana Sabatés & Josep Lloret & Javier Martin-Vide, 2012. "Climate modulation of fish populations: the role of the Western Mediterranean Oscillation (WeMO) in sardine (Sardina pilchardus) and anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) production in the north-western Me," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 110(3), pages 925-939, February.
    3. Walter Leal Filho & Gustavo J. Nagy & Filipe Martinho & Mustafa Saroar & Mónica Gómez Erache & Ana Lígia Primo & Miguel A. Pardal & Chunlan Li, 2022. "Influences of Climate Change and Variability on Estuarine Ecosystems: An Impact Study in Selected European, South American and Asian Countries," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-15, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:417:y:2002:i:6886:d:10.1038_417275a. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.