Relationship between albacore ( Thunnus alalunga) fishing grounds in the Indian Ocean and the thermal environment revealed by cloud-free microwave sea surface temperature

Abstract

Using cloud-free Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) sea surface temperature (SST) and daily set longline fishery data, we studied the relationship between albacore (ALB) fishing grounds and thermal conditions in the southern Indian Ocean. SST and Jensen–Shannon divergence (JSD) maps with a daily spatiotemporal resolution were related to sites with high catches per unit effort (CPUE) (>11 fish/10 3 hooks). A high JSD is considered to be an index of a SST front. In winter, high CPUE occurred in the vicinity of the North Subtropical Front ( Belkin and Gordon, 1996), where SST was 15–19 °C and JSD was 0.3–0.9. Histograms of the high CPUE plotted against SST and JSD indicated that 95% of the high CPUEs were in the 16–18.5 °C SST range and 97% were in the 0.4–0.9 JSD range. These ranges of SST and JSD are optimum ranges. These cloud-free SST/JSD analyses clearly demonstrate the seasonal north–south movement of the optimum SST and JSD band, which corresponds to the North Subtropical Front in the southern Indian Ocean. Monthly maps of joint probability density (JPD) with the optimum ranges of SST and JSD revealed that high CPUEs are located in the narrow bands with high JPD (>50%).