Abstract
Fish surveys are carried out by the Marine Laboratory Aberdeen to assess the abundance of certain species in the North Sea and west of Scotland. Data from the first quarter of six International Bottom Trawl Surveys (1989 to 1994) were analysed to investigate the spatial distributions of cod, haddock and whiting, each divided into 3 length classes (0 to 20 cm, 21 to 30 cm & greater than 31 cm). The data were collected on a random stratified basis with occasional replicates in some blocks. To account for this survey strategy, a weighted variogram was calculated for each dataset. In addition, a mean geostatistical structure was computed for each species at length, as some characteristics are consistent from year to year. The variogram was modelled using an automatic weighted least squares procedure which also provided an absolute goodness of fit measure which was used to decide which of the spatial structures should be used. The structure is used to compute the abundance and variance, to give a measure of the precision. The geostatistical variance is compared to the variance obtained without taking into account the spatial structure. This paper presents a summary of the results, and looks at example datasets to illustrate some of the methodological aspects involved.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Anon. (1992). “Manual for the International Bottom Trawl Surveys”. ICES CM. 1992/H:3,47 pp.
Anon. (1997). “Report of the International Bottom Trawl Survey Working Group”. ICES CM. 1997/H:6, 50 pp.
Anon. (1998). “Report of the working group on the assessment of northern shelf demersal stocks”. ICES CM. I998/Assess:1.
Armstrong, M (1984). Improving the estimation and modelling of the variogram. In Geostatistics for natural resource characterisation (ed. G. Verly, M. David, A. G. Joumel & A Marechal), pp. 1–19. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Armstrong, M., Renard, D., Rivoirard, J. & Petitgas, P. (1992).”Geostatistics for fish survey data”: Centre de Geostatistique. Ecole des Mines de Paris, Fontainebleau, France, 89 pp.
Cook, R. M., Sinclair, A & Stefansson, G. (1997). “Potential collapse of North Sea cod stocks”. Nature 385, 521–522.
Cressie, N. (1991). “Statistics for spatial data”. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 900 pp.
Fernandes, P. G. & Simmonds, E. J. (1997) Variographic refinement of North Sea herring acoustic survey data. In geoENV I — Geostatistics for Environmental Applications (ed. A Soares, J. Gomez-Hemandez & R. Froidevaux), pp. 451–462. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Godo, O. R. (1994) Factors affecting the reliability of groundfish abundance estimates from bottom trawl surveys. In Marine fish behaviour in capture and abundance estimation (ed. A Femo & S. Olsen), pp. 166 – 199. Oxford: Fishing News Books.
Guiblin, P. & Rivoirard, J. (1996). “Spatial distribution of length and age for Orkney Shetland herring”. ICES CM. 1996/D:14 Ref.H, 20 pp.
Gunderson, D. R. (1993). “Surveys of fisheries resources”. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 248 pp.
Heessen, H. J. L. (1983). “Distribution and abundance of young cod and whiting in the south eastern North Sea in the period 1980 – 1982”. ICES CM. 1983/G:30,4 pp.
Hilborn, R. & Walters, C. J. (1992). “Quantitative fisheries stock assessment. Choice, dynamics and uncertainty”. New York: Chapman and hall. 570 pp.
Hislop, J. R. G. (1984). A comparison of the reproductive tactics and strategies of cod, haddock, whiting and Norway pout in the North Sea. In Fish reproduction: strategies and tactics (eds. G. W. Potts & R. J. Wootton), pp. 311–329. London: Academic Press.
Hislop, J. R. G. (1996). “Changes in North Sea gadoid stocks”. ICES Journal of Marine Science 53,1146–1156.
Hutchings, J. A. (1996). “Spatial and temporal variation in the density of northern cod and a review of hypotheses for the stock’s collapse”. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 53,943–962.
Knijn, R., Boon, T., Heessen, H. J. L. & Hislop, J. R. G. (1993). “Atlas of North Sea fishes”. ICES Co-operative Research Report 94. 268 pp.
Maravelias, C., Reid, D. G., Simmonds, E. J. & Haralabous, J. (1996). “Spatial analysis and mapping of acoustic survey data in the presence of high local variability: geostatistical application to North Sea herring (Clupea harengus)”. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 53,1497–1505.
Matheron, G. (1971). “The theory of regionalised variables and its applications”. Cahiers du centre de Morphologie Mathematique, Fontainebleau 5.
Petitgas, P. (1993). “Geostatistics for fish stock assessments: A review and an acoustic application”. ICES Journal of Marine Science 50, 285–298.
Petitgas, P. & Prampart, A. (1993). “EVA (Estimation Variance). A geostatistical software on IBM-PC for structure characterisation and variance computation”. ICES CM. 1993/D:65,32 pp.
Pitcher, T. J., Magurran, A E. & Edwards, J. I. (1985). “Schooling mackerel and herring choose neighbours of similar size”. Marine Biology. 86,319–322.
Porteiro, C., Carrera, P. & Miquel, J. (1995). “Analysis of Spanish acoustic surveys for sardine, 1991–1993: abundance estimates and inter-annual variability”. ICES Journal of Marine Science 53,429–433.
Rivoirard, J. (1992). “Comments on the course on geostatistics for fish survey data (Fontainebleau, 3–7 Feb 1992).”. ICES CM. 1992/D: 12 pp.
Smith, S. J. & Gavaris, S. (1993). “Improving the precision of abundance estimates of eastern Scotian shelf Atlantic cod from bottom trawl surveys”. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 13, 35–47.
Warren, W. G. (1997). “Changes in the within-survey spatio-temporal structure of the northern cod (Gadus morhua) population, 1985–1992”. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 54 (Suppl. 1), 139–148.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this paper
Cite this paper
Fernandes, P.G., Rivoirard, J. (1999). A Geostatistical Analysis Of The Spatial Distribution and Abundance of Cod, Haddock and Whiting in North Scotland. In: Gómez-Hernández, J., Soares, A., Froidevaux, R. (eds) geoENV II — Geostatistics for Environmental Applications. Quantitative Geology and Geostatistics, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9297-0_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9297-0_17
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5249-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-9297-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive