BUSCADOR RECOLECTA

CACO-3 Cruise (29GD20040623) carried out on the Research Vessel García del Cid in 2004, The project proposes a continuous sampling of oceanography and plankton 24 hours a day.The general objective of this project is to analyze the possible variations experienced by the climate in the last decades with significant changes in the composition, distribution and abundance of fish communities on the Catalan coast. It is intended to study the variation in the distribution and abundance of those fish species more vulnerable to changes in the environmental conditions, especially the temperature of the water, in the last 20 years on the Catalan coast. We will focus on pelagic species of warm waters, which are the ones that respond most quickly to an environmental change. Therefore, samplings should be made in summer.Sampling was carried out during July 2003 and July 2004, coinciding with the spawning period of Sardinella aurita and Engraulis encrasicolus. Determination of the basic hydrographic parameters was performed with CTD casts at stations distributed along transects, from near the coast to the shelf edge, along the Catalan coast (NW Mediterranean).. The CTD employed was a Neil Brown Mark III with an attached SeaTech fluorometer. Profiles of temperature, salinity, density and fluorescence were averaged at 1 m intervals.To determine the vertical distribution of fish eggs and larvae, sampling was focused on 2 areas of the Catalan coast where the continental shelf was relatively wide: one in the southern part, which was called the ‘southern area’ and the other in the north that was denoted the ‘northern area’.Vertically stratified zooplankton samples for fish larvae (45 cm mouth diameter, 333 µm mesh) and microzooplankton (9 cm diameter, 53 µm mesh) were collected simultaneously using a double Longhurst-Hardy Plankton Recorder net (LHPR)