Effec of climatic variation on the relative abundance of the red alga Gelidium robustum in Baja California sur, Mexico

The red alga Gelidium robustum is important,because of its commercial exploitation in Mexico as araw material for the agar industry, providing 10% ofthe world production of agarophytes. In recent years,its annual harvest in Mexico has shownobvious,variations partly because of an increasedharvesting...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Hernández Guerrero, Claudia Judith, Casas Valdez, María Margarita, Ortega García, Sofía, Hernández Vázquez, Sergio
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2000
Country:México
Institution:Instituto Politécnico Nacional
Repository:Repositorio Digital del IPN
OAI Identifier:oai:www.repositoriodigital.ipn.mx:123456789/13478
Online Access:http://www.repositoriodigital.ipn.mx/handle/123456789/13478
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Gelidium robustum
abundance relative
archipielago
La Niña
CPUE
climatic variability
Description
Summary:The red alga Gelidium robustum is important,because of its commercial exploitation in Mexico as araw material for the agar industry, providing 10% ofthe world production of agarophytes. In recent years,its annual harvest in Mexico has shownobvious,variations partly because of an increasedharvesting effort, but also because of environmentalchanges. An analysis is presented of the effect thatinterannual variability of the sea surfacetemperature, wind speed, and upwelling index had onthe relative abundance of this alga from 1980 to 1990.The results indicate a close relation betweenenvironmental fluctuations and the relative abundanceof this species. The response of G. robustum tothe different environmental conditions has not alwaysbeen equal. During El Niño 1982–84, the seasurface temperature was the most important factor andthere was a high negative correlation with therelative abundance. A lag period of three monthsshowed a positive correlation with upwelling index andwind speed. Under normal conditions and during LaNiña, the relative abundance of the alga showed apositive correlation with the sea surface temperature. For the upwelling index and wind speed, therelationship was similar to that during El Niño.