📢 The 2024 reports on the state of fisheries in #Catalonia are now available!
📄Part 1: methodology and results of the continuous monitoring of fishery resources.
🐟Part 2: stock assessment of the main commercial species.
📥Download them here 👉 icatmar.cat/en/publicati...

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🔥 This double stressor — rising temperatures and reduced food availability — creates a challenging environment for juvenile sardines in the North

📚 Our study highlights how local environmental changes can have major biological and socioeconomic impacts

🔗 read the article doi.org/10.1016/j.ma...

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🌱 We also detected a shift in the phenology of primary productivity (a proxy for food availability):

In the North, the productive season now ends 32 days earlier than 20 years ago.
In the South, it has remained more stable.

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📉 But long-term trends reveal a more complex picture.

⚠️ While higher temperatures promote growth at small scales, the sudden drop in sardine size observed the North after 2007 would linked to reduced growth between ages 1 and 2, likely due to earlier maturation triggered by warming.

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📈 Sardines in the South grow faster during their first year of life, reaching larger sizes at the same age compared to those in the North.
🌡️ Why?

In the South, waters reach 24 °C for 3 months — optimal for juvenile growth.
In the North, this temperature is rarely reached.

📍 The two study areas are only 90 km apart, but show clear environmental differences:

North: colder waters
South: warmer waters
➡️ And this directly affects juvenile growth.