ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil Advance Access originally published online on March 28, 2009
ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 2009 66(7):1595-1604; doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsp050
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This article appears in the following ICES Journal of Marine Science issue: Effects of Climate Change on the World's Oceans [View the issue table of contents]
What drove tuna catches between 1525 and 1756 in southern Europe?
1 Department of Applied Physics II, Apdo. 644 University of Basque Country, 48080 Bilbao, Spain
2 Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS-Research Centre, Geesthacht, Germany
3 Dept. Biología, Univ. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Edf. Ciencias Básicas (B-203), Campus de Tafira, 35017 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
4 AZTI–Tecnalia, Marine Research Division, Herrera Kaia Portualdea z/g, 20110 Pasaia, Gipuzkoa, Spain
Correspondence to U. Ganzedo: tel: +34 94 601 3376; fax: +34 94 601 3500; e-mail: unai.ganzedo{at}ehu.es
Ganzedo, U., Zorita, E., Solari, A. P., Chust, G., Santana del Pino, A., Polanco, J., and Castro, J. J. 2009. What drove tuna catches between 1525 and 1756 in southern Europe? – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 1595–1604.From 1525 to 1756, catches of tuna in almadrabas (trapnets) fluctuated greatly, but the overall trend was a downwards one. The aim of this study is to assess the potential influence of climatic factors on tuna fishing. We performed time-series analysis of the climate over the years 1525–1756 and determined whether such events can be related to historical data on bluefin tuna catches in the almadrabas of Medina Sidonia. We used a generalized linear model to relate the tuna catches to climatic parameters. We carried out variance partitioning analysis of tuna catches to assess the relative contribution of climate from temporal autocorrelation. The temporal autocorrelation in tuna catches was used as a surrogate for the contribution of the population dynamics to variation in the catch series. The results indicated that climate accounted for up to 12.3% of the total variance, the temporal effects (autocorrelation) accounted for up to 38.8% of the total variance, and up to 35.7% of the catch was accounted for by the joint effect of the two components. The significant variance accounted for by climate suggests that low temperatures during the Maunder minimum (the so-called "The Little Ice Age", years 1640–1715) may have reduced both recruitment and abundance of tuna in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Our findings suggest that both environmental and population dynamic components played an important role in regulating the almadraba catches in Medina Sidonia.
Keywords: almadraba, bluefin tuna, climatic factors, Maunder minimum, solar cycle
Received 15 August 2008; accepted 2 February 2009; advance access publication 28 March 2009.