engleski

TEMPERATURE-DRIVEN ABUNDANCE CHANGE OF THE EUROPEAN LOBSTER (Homarus gammarus) IN THE ADRIATIC SEA

European lobster (Homarus gammarus) is distributed throughout the whole Adriatic Sea, although it is more abundant in the northern part. As it is a boreal species, H. gammarus spawning, settlement and recruitment success might be strongly affected by both global trend of increasing sea surface temperatures and decadal thermohaline variability which occurs in the Adriatic Sea, driven by the Adriatic- Ionian Bimodal Oscillating System (BiOS) regimes. We related sea bottom temperatures measured during last decade with landings data of H. gammarus. The temperature data were taken from regularly sampled oceanographic stations, while landings data were obtained by Directorate of Fisheries for 10 fishing zones in a period from 2008 to 2017. The results show a decline in landings in the south and the middle Adriatic, while landings increase in the northern Adriatic after 2012. Those changes coincided with the increase of bottom sea temperature after 2012. The temperature increase coincides with the change between negative and positive BiOS regimes, of which the latter is known to advect warm and salty waters to the Adriatic, and thus we hypothesize that the BiOS mechanism has a strong effect to the lobster life cycle, particularly in the southern and middle Adriatic. The overall increase in temperatures in the future climate might result in more prominent migration of H. gammarus towards the northern Adriatic, causing a decline in lobster catch in south and middle Adriatic.

Homarus gammarus ; abundance ; BiOS ; sea bottom temperature

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