Abstract
Several oceanographic studies have associated tuna fisheries to sea surface temperature (SST) fields, although catch per unit of effort (CPUE) has not shown a clear relationship with SST. However, most results concerned species that occur deep in the water column. In this paper, we present a study on the relationship between SST and CPUE for the skipjack tuna fisheries off the southern Brazilian coast, which take place at the sea surface. We use historical data from the Japanese fleet, which operated in the area from July 1982 to June 1992. Fishing sets occurred only in areas where SST ranged from 17°C to 30°C. Frequency of occurrence vs. SST showed a Gaussian distribution, with highest CPUEs in waters of SST 22°‐26.5°C. The relationship between CPUE (or fishing set occurrence) and SST varied seasonally. Largest CPUEs occurred in summer, independently of SST. Therefore, temperature alone could not be used as a determinant of CPUE, suggesting that seasonal variability of other environmental parameters has a stronger effect on the CPUE than does SST. However, when the seasonal cycle was excluded from the data sets, a relationship between the interannual variability of SST and CPUE became apparent. Cross‐correlation analysis between CPUE and SST has shown that oscillations in CPUE anomalies precede oscillations in SST anomalies by a month, but the mechanism relating them in this way is unknown.