[OANNES Foro] Impacts of Kelvin wave forcing in the Peru Humboldt Current system: Scenarios of spatial reorganizations from physics to fishers

[raul sanchez]

Progress In Oceanography
Volume 79, Issues 2-4, October-December 2008, Pages 278-289 
The Northern Humboldt Current System: Ocean Dynamics, Ecosystem Processes, and Fisheries 
doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2008.10.017    

Impacts of Kelvin wave forcing in the Peru Humboldt Current system: Scenarios of spatial reorganizations from physics to fishers 

Sophie Bertranda, b, c, , , Boris Dewitted, c, Jorge Tamc, Erich Díazc and Arnaud Bertrandb, c

aUniversity of Washington, School of Fisheries, Box 355640, Seattle, WA 98195, USA

bIRD, Centre de Recherche Halieutique Méditerranéenne et Tropicale, Avenue Jean Monnet, BP 171, 34203 Sète Cedex, France

cInstituto del Mar del Perú, CIMOBP, Esquina Gamarra y Gral. Valle s/n, Apartado 22, Callao, Lima, Peru

dIRD, UMR LEGOS, 14 Av. Edouard Belin, 31401 Toulouse Cedex 4, France

Abstract
Because climate change challenges the sustainability of important fish populations and the fisheries they support, we need to understand how large scale climatic forcing affects the functioning of marine ecosystems. In the Humboldt Current system (HCS), a main driver of climatic variability is coastally-trapped Kelvin waves (KWs), themselves originating as oceanic equatorial KWs. Here we (i) describe the spatial reorganizations of living organisms in the Humboldt coastal system as affected by oceanic KWs forcing, (ii) quantify the strength of the interactions between the physical and biological component dynamics of the system, (iii) formulate hypotheses on the processes which drive the redistributions of the organisms, and (iv) build scenarios of space occupation in the HCS under varying KW forcing. To address these questions we explore, through bivariate lagged correlations and multivariate statistics, the relationships between time series of oceanic
 KW amplitude (TAO mooring data and model-resolved baroclinic modes) and coastal Peruvian oceanographic data (SST, coastal upwelled waters extent), anchoveta spatial distribution (mean distance to the coast, spatial concentration of the biomass, mean depth of the schools), and fishing fleet statistics (trip duration, searching duration, number of fishing sets and catch per trip, features of the foraging trajectory as observed by satellite vessel monitoring system). Data sets span all or part of January 1983 to September 2006. The results show that the effects of oceanic KW forcing are significant in all the components of the coastal ecosystem, from oceanography to the behaviour of the top predators – fishers. This result provides evidence for a bottom-up transfer of the behaviours and spatial stucturing through the ecosystem. We propose that contrasting scenarios develop during the passage of upwelling versus downwelling KWs. From a predictive point of
 view, we show that KW amplitudes observed in the mid-Pacific can be used to forecast which system state will dominate the HCS over the next 2–6 months. Such predictions should be integrated in the Peruvian adaptive fishery management.

Keywords: Climate forcing; Ecological scenarios; Fish distribution; Fishers’ movements; Kelvin waves; Peru Humboldt Current system

Saludos,

Raúl E. Sánchez Scaglioni