Environmental drivers of sardine (Sardina pilchardus) in the Catalan Sea (NW Mediterranean Sea)

In the area surrounding the Ebro Delta, similar to the rest of the north-western Mediterranean Sea, the sardine (Sardina pilchardus), one of the most exploited small pelagic fishes, has suffered a decreasing trend in abundance and biomass in the last decade, with low values in evidence since 2007. The dependence of this species on environmental factors makes it vulnerable to environmental changes; consequently, the abundance of the species is highly variable. Using segmented regression, we evaluated the presence of discontinuities in the temporal pattern of the seasonally adjusted landings per unit effort (LPUE), which was used as a proxy for abundance, between 2000 and 2013. The results suggested a sudden increase in mid-2005, followed by a sharp decrease starting in 2006. A generalized additive mixed model (GAMM), incorporating the linear correlation structure, was used to identify relationships between the seasonally adjusted LPUE and trends of the Western Mediterranean Oscillation index (WeMOI), sea surface temperature (SST), salinity (SAL) and the Zonal and Meridional Currents (ZC and MC, respectively). The variance inflation factors (VIFs) were calculated between all environmental variables to avoid high-dimensional collinearities. The final GAMM, selected using the Akaike information criterion, indicated that positive WeMOI values, which favour the productivity of the area, along with SAL (at ca. 38) and a northward-flowing MC, favoured LPUE. Our results, obtained by applying a method in which variation due to season, non-linearity, autocorrelation and collinearity of the covariates was taken into account, provided further evidence of the dependence of the sardine population upon specific hydrographic variables.