The role of interactions among environmental conditions in controlling historical fisheries variability

We developed categorical time-series regression models to evaluate the roles of lagged stock abundance history, hydrographic variability, and anthropogenic factors in controlling the variation in abundance of striped bass and American shad in the Potomac, Delaware, and Hudson rivers. These models can be used to evaluate directly the role of interactions of variates to produce greater than average recruitment to commercial fish stocks. Whereas hydrographic factors dominate striped bass dynamics in all three estuaries for the period 1929-1976 compared to the pollution variables tested (i. e., sewage loading, dissolved oxygen, and biological oxygen demand), American shad shows strong dependence on the anthropogenic factors compared to hydrographic variates in all three estuaries.