Acta Adriatica, Vol. 58 No. 2, 2017.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.32582/aa.58.2.12
Temperature constraints shaped the migration routes of mackerel (Scomber scombrus) in the Black Sea
Daniel PAULY
orcid.org/0000-0002-2434-0355
; Sea Around Us, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, 2202 Main Mall, University of British Columbia, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z4
Çetin KESKIN
orcid.org/0000-0002-2434-0355
; Faculty of Fisheries, University of Istanbul, Ordu St. No: 200, 34470 Laleli, İstanbul/Turkey
Abstract
Conventional narratives explain fish migrations in term of requirements (food, mates, habitats, etc.), with adequate temperatures being optional. Here, using the example of a (commercially extinct) stock of Black Sea mackerel (Scomber scombrus), we suggest that seasonal migrations are driven by seasonal temperature cycles. Therein, temperature acts as a constraint determining where the fish can be at any given time, and not a one of several factors which they would consider when choosing between alternative migration routes. Generalizing, we suggest that temperature should generally be an explicit part of hypotheses about the migratory behaviours of marine fishes. For illustration of what may occur when this is not the case, it is suggested that the non-consideration of temperature in a model of North Atlantic mackerel migration may have led, among the researchers concerned, to a sense of complacency with respect to the climate change-induced changes in the phenology of this fish in the North Atlantic, whose distribution and migration are misleadingly seen as “stochastic”.
Keywords
fish; global warming; distribution; oxygen requirement
Hrčak ID:
193970
URI
Publication date:
12.12.2017.
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