Analysing the climate influence on sardinella abundance in northwest Africa from a novel end-to-end model strategy

Canary Upwelling System (CUS) is, together with California, Humboldt, and Benguela, one of the four main Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems (EBUS) across the globe. In particular, small pelagic fishes (hereinafter SPF) dominate the marine biomass in EBUS where they represent a vital intermediate connection between plankton and large predatory species. Regarding the CUS, SPF constitute in weight close to 70% of the total landings of northwest African countries, being the the Sardinella aurita (hereinafter sardinella) one of the dominant SPF species in terms of abundance. This species, for instance, represents the primary source of animal protein in Senegal. However, the absence of systematic observations of sardinella across northwest Africa largely constraint our understanding of how the environmental variability impacts the abundance and distribution of this species. In this work a novel end-to-end (here climate-to-fish) model-based strategy, including explicit representation of sardinella dynamics, has been designed. The results we are obtaining are enabling us to better understand interesting links (and related underlying processes) with well-known climate modes such as NAO and ENSO.