Comparison across 42 North Atlantic fish stocks of temporal patterns in recruitment dynamics, including the role of spawning stock biomass and temperature

No abstracts are to be cited without prior reference to the author.

The present study examines statistically the general validity of a set of hypotheses regarding long-term changes in the relationship between recruitment, spawning stock and temperature in commercially harvested fish stocks, Disentangling the effects of climate variability and internal population dynamics on recruitment by means of statistical data analysis is no easy task. It can, however, be facilitated by using long time series on many stocks in comparative analyses, an approach particularly insightful to explore the mechanisms linking climate and their ecosystem responses. Here a comparative approach is employed in statistically modeling temporal changes in recruitment dynamics in 42 commercially harvested fish stocks, mainly gadoids and clupeids, in the northern North Atlantic (Table 1)