Abstract
In frame of fisheries management, a stock assessment using surplus production models incorporating environmental parameters was dealt with one of the most important commercially crustacean fisheries resources along the Tunisian coast, the Melicertus kerathurus stock. The analysis was carried out for a period of 17 years with a database including fishing efforts, catches, catch per unit effort (CPUE) and sea surface temperature (SST). CLIMPROD is the software used to select the appropriate model and fit to the fishery and environmental data. Overall, SST was positively correlated to the yield and abundance index (CPUE) explaining 47% and 57% of their variability respectively, nevertheless. The incorporation of the SST in global model demonstrated that the SST influenced both the catchability and the abundance of this species separately. In fact the impact of SST leads to consider a production model impacted on the one hand by a linear relationship between the CPUE and the fishing effort, and on the other hand by also a linear relationship between the CPUE and the SST for both catchability or abundance of the species. The interpretation of global model with environmental parameters is changed with the incorporation of climate parameter.
Highlights
The last studies of stock assessment are based on age structured models but this type of a single-species stock assessment cannot be applied to invertebrates because they are considered as hard-to-age species [1]
The global models or surplus production models were adopted for stock assessment of Melicertus kerathurus without and including environmental variables using CLIMPROD as software [29]
The Melicertus kerathurus landing are caught along the Tunisian coast from the north, passing by the east to reach the south, where, 95% of the production is fished and the rest is from the north-east of the country (Figure 3)
Summary
The last studies of stock assessment are based on age structured models but this type of a single-species stock assessment cannot be applied to invertebrates because they are considered as hard-to-age species [1] For this reason and according to the data available we use surplus production models; these models take into consideration only the fishing effort. Among the invertebrates we cited the crustaceans which were the hardest-to-age species compared to cephalopods This family presents 7% of the world captures production in marine fishing area and in inland water for 2010. Melicerthus kerathurus (Forskäl, 1775) known as caramote prawn is one of this group It is a demersal crustacean, widely distributed inhabiting the Mediterranean sea and the eastern Atlantic from the south coast of England to Angola [4] [5] and commercially is among the important species especially in the Mediterranean sea and in Tunisia [6]. The object of this paper is presenting the utility of the effect of environmental parameters in stock assessment and as basic information for future fishery management and fishing forecast for Melicertus kerathurus caught in the north and the east of Tunisia, knowing that Melicertus kerathurus fishery is not controlled in this area
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