Understanding spatiotemporal changes in the distributions of marine species is important in helping fisheries and bay managers take precautionary action to better manage species and to prevent biodiversity loss. The changes in abundance of 44 fish and invertebrate species across major bays along Texas coast was analyzed with generalized linear regression in the R Studio Programming environment. Catch data were collected by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in seven major bays in the Gulf of Mexico from 1982 to 2016 using various fishing gear including gillnet, bag seine, and bay trawl. Of these, the sample was narrowed to fish and invertebrate species with between 40 and 70% observation rate, and generalized linear model was fitted to the species catch-per-unit effort data to determine their changes across bays (space) and over time.
Results/Conclusions
In total, 24 fish and 8 invertebrate species had significant temporal correlations (p-value < 0.05), while only 4 fish and 4 invertebrate species had significant spatial trends (p-value < 0.05). More species having a significant temporal correlation than spatial correlation suggest that time has a higher impact on species distribution than spatial/bay-to-bay differences for the ones investigated. This may be attributed to changes in fishery management or environmental conditions. The findings for this study will help fisheries managers recognize trends in population dynamics, take precautionary action to prevent biodiversity loss, and better manage ecologically and economically important marine fish and invertebrate species.