INTERANNUAL VARIABILITY OF SMALL PELAGIC SPAWNING HABITAT IN THE CALIFORNIA CURRENT

David Checkley (SIO)

Link to NOAA Strategic Plan: NOAA's Mission Goal 1: Protect, Restore, and Manage the Use of Coastal and Ocean Resources through Ecosystem-based Management

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND SPECIFIC PLANS TO ACHIEVE THEM

To define the spawning habitat of the Pacific sardine in waters off central and southern California using empirical data on fish egg distributions and the environment, the latter including observations using satellites.

RESEARCH ACCOMPLISHMENTS

The majority of this research has not yet been performed, but two options for the completion of the work have been identified, one of which will be pursued during the next reporting period. One activity that has been performed is the writing of a manuscript, led by NOAA scientist Dr. Christian Reiss, on the use of satellite data to estimate the spawning habitat of sardine and anchovy off central and southern California. This paper shows that a model of spawning habitat with input variables of satellite-derived sea surface temperature and ocean color currently provides a good prediction of the spawning habitat used by the Pacific sardine but greatly overestimates the spawning habitat used by the northern anchovy. Sardine is at high abundance and anchovy at low abundance presently and we believe this may affect the extent to which available habitat is used by these two species.