Sheridan: Forecasting the fishery for Penaeus duorarum 



751 



quarters (12 months) in advance of a given fishing 

 year, thus covering new recruits and spawning stocks. 

 In my models, fishing activity on the Tortugas 

 Grounds during the waning months of a given fish- 

 ing year (May-July) may be related to the status of 

 the spawning stock and its future production of lar- 

 vae during the summer and fall months. Catch and 

 effort variables in these models had positive effects 

 on forecasted landings, although CPUE variables had 

 negative coefficients. These indices may be related to 

 prerecruits or to potential parent spawning stocks, al- 

 though there are no statistically significant parent 

 stock-recruitment relationships for Gulf of Mexico 



Penaeus (Nance, 1993). 



In a descriptive model for the North Carolina pink 

 shrimp fishery (Hettler and Chester, 1982; Hettler, 

 1992), landings during February-July were posi- 

 tively correlated with water temperatures during the 

 coldest two weeks of the preceding winter. Severe 

 cold temperatures were postulated to have reduced 

 landings by killing postlarvae and juveniles overwin- 

 tering in estuaries (Hettler and Chester, 1982). The 

 model successfully described landings within ±20% 

 of actual landings in five of 10 years (Hettler, 1992). 

 The opposite effect was seen in Florida (Browder, 

 1985), where mean January-March air temperature, 



