Jean-Jacques Vayne

Les observations de poissons tropicaux et le réchauffement des eaux dans l'Atlantique européen

Abstract A recapitulation of the records of tropical fishes from European Atlantic waters shows that 67.6% were fishes caught from the upper slope, between approximately 200 and 600 m; 19.8% were fishes caught from the continental shelf; and 13.5% were specimens caught from the middle slope, between 700 and 1 300 m. Since 1963, the upper slope species have made regular northward range extensions off of south Portugal to north-western Ireland (about 55° 30′N), more and less rapidly, about 30 years for Cyttopsis roseus and only 6 years for Sphoeroides pachygaster. The continental shelf species, observed from 1969 but mostly from 1981, have a northward range to south-eastern Ireland (about 52° N), but 65.2% of them have been caught off the south of the Bay of Biscay. The middle slope species, recorded only from 1991 according to the development of the deep fishery, were caught between 48° N and 60° N. The northward range extension of upper slope species and the higher frequency of records of continental shelf species from the southern part of the Bay of Biscay coincide with the investigations on the warming of the south-north current in the upper slope of northern Spain and of the south French Atlantic continental shelf.