Effect of climatic variability on horse mackerel abundance in Senegalese waters

Abstract

<span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family: " times="" new="" roman";mso-fareast-font-family:"times="" roman";mso-bidi-font-family:="" mangal;mso-ansi-language:en-gb;mso-fareast-language:en-us;mso-bidi-language:="" hi"="" lang="EN-GB">The investigation of climate variables impacts on small pelagic resources has increased rapidly in recent years. An observational sea surface temperature from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR Pathfinder V5.0) satellite and the North Atlantic Oscillation index from 1999 to 2009 were used to investigate the abundance of horse mackerel in Senegalese waters using simple linear model and generalized additive models. The results show that the variability of horse mackerel abundance seems to be controlled by the sea surface temperature through the North Atlantic driven effect. The generalized additive model seems to explain better the link between climatic terms and horse mackerel abundance than the simple linear model.</span>