Cited by 194Marine and fisheries researchFish Ecology and Management StudiesFish Biology and Ecology Studies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 99 of the 99 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 22 of the 79 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

Global habitat preferences of commercially valuable tuna

Open access
Arrizabalaga, Haritz, Dufour, Florence, Kell, Laurence, Merino, Gorka, Ibaibarriaga, Leire, Chust, Guillem, Irigoien, Xabier, Santiago, Josu, Murua, Hilario, Fraile, Igaratza, Chifflet, Marina, Goikoetxea, Nerea, Sagarminaga, Yolanda, Aumont, Olivier, Bopp, Laurent, Herrera, Miguel, Marc Fromentin, Jean, Bonhomeau, Sylvain·2015·Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This study uses longline CPUE from 1958–2007 for six tuna species across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans to compare global habitat preferences with quotient analysis and Generalized Additive Models. It finds tropical tunas prefer warm, low-oxygen, stratified waters, while Atlantic and southern bluefin tunas prefer higher chlorophyll and tolerate the most extreme sea surface height anomalies and mixed layer depths.

Key findings

  • Full GAMs explained 45% (bigeye) to 64% (skipjack) of null deviance; all final models retained TEMP5, salinity, SSH, MLD, and DCHL.
  • Quotient analysis showed tropical tunas prefer warmer surface waters than temperate tunas: yellowfin preferred >25°C, while bigeye and skipjack preferred 20–28°C; albacore avoided waters below 14°C, and southern bluefin preference and Atlantic bluefin tolerance extended down to 4°C.
  • Atlantic bluefin tolerated the widest range of environmental conditions, including the widest temperature tolerance range (approximately 1–20°C), high salinity above 37 PSU, and negative SSH anomalies; southern bluefin preferred mixed layer depths beyond approximately 300 m.
  • Tropical tunas generally preferred lower oxygen environments than temperate tunas; yellowfin preferred relatively low oxygen waters (<0.2 mmol/l), bigeye tolerated them, and skipjack avoided waters below 0.1 mmol/l.

Methods

  • Longline catch and effort data were obtained from the five TRFMOs for 1958–2007, except southern bluefin from 1965 and eastern Pacific stocks only until 2004; no skipjack longline data were available from WCPFC. Data were aggregated by quarter and 5°×5° resolution, and nominal CPUE was computed as catch per number of hooks, using only positive CPUE records.
  • Environmental variables came from the PISCES biogeochemical model: surface temperature (TEMP5), temperature at 100 m (TEMP100), sea surface salinity, dissolved oxygen at 100 m, sea surface height, mixed layer depth, chlorophyll, and mesozooplankton averaged over 0–100 m.
  • Habitat preferences were assessed with quotient analysis using 400 re-sampling iterations to test preference/tolerance/avoidance, and with GAMs assuming lognormal positive CPUE, spline functions with smoothness restricted to 4, fixed factors for year, season, and stock, and stepwise backward selection by AIC; TEMP100, oxygen, and zooplankton were excluded from full GAMs due to collinearity.

Limitations

  • The paper states that CPUE may not accurately reflect population abundance due to changes in fishing practice, fleet efficiency, or environmental effects on catchability, although fixed factors were included and interpreting abundance trends was out of scope.
  • The paper states that collinearity prevented inclusion of oxygen and other correlated variables in the final GAMs, and that predictions outside the observed range were unrealistic for some species, such as skipjack in the Mediterranean and at extreme latitudes.
  • The paper states that longline data mostly catch adult tunas, so results mainly reflect adult habitat preferences; it also notes that spatio-temporally averaged chlorophyll may not capture frontal effects, prey field observations are generally lacking, and tagging studies are often local and short-term.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.dsr2.2014.07.001

Cites

99 of 99 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

54 Own result · 18 No full text of the sources · 18 No basis given · 9 Own interpretation · 8 Partly supported · 6 Supported · 6 Own method · 5 Not checked yet · 4 Supported so far · 1 Couldn’t confirm · 1 Sources not found · accuracy not yet measured

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 41
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 16
55 of 55
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    CPUE is a proxy for fish abundance.

    “the CPUE was assumed to be a proxy for fish abundance.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Tunas show a wide vertical distribution.

    “For this study, and because tunas show a wide vertical distribution, we selected the following variables to characterise the surface and subsurface environment:”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Positive CPUE observations follow a lognormal error distribution.

    “Positive CPUE observations were assumed to follow a lognormal error distribution and they were modelled as a function of the environmental variables, as well as fixed factors for”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    The niche model is unimodal.

    “The degree of smoothness of model terms was restricted to 4 in order to assume a unimodal niche model (sensu Hutchinson, 1957).”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Changes in abundance and catchability are likely to occur at the stock level.

    “Changes in abundance and catchability are likely to occur at the stock level and so three way interactions among fixed factors were considered in the full GAMs.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The response curves of the final GAMs can be interpreted as habitat suitability for the tuna species.

    “The final GAMs were kept as those describing the habitat of the tuna species, and their response curves for environmental variables were interpreted in terms of habitat suitability (Figure 4).”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Longline catch per unit effort (CPUE) is a valid proxy for tuna habitat preferences.

    “our study reflects mostly habitat preferences for adult tunas (since it is based on longline data that mostly catches adult fish)”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The quotient analysis's preference, tolerance and avoidance ranges validly indicate species-specific habitat preferences.

    “Summary of quotient analyses, with species specific preference (green), tolerance (yellow) and avoidance (red) ranges for each environmental variable.”
8 of 8

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 98 references

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Block, 2001, vol. 19
  2. FAO, 2011. Tuna and tuna-like species. In: Review of the State of World Marine Fishery Resources. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper No. 569. Rome, pp. 227–243.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 194

Metadata

Authors
Arrizabalaga, H., Dufour, F., Kell, L., Merino, G., Ibaibarriaga, L., Chust, G., Irigoien, X., Santiago, J., Murua, H., Fraile, I., Chifflet, M., Goikoetxea, N., Sagarminaga, Y., Aumont, O., Bopp, L., Herrera, M., Marc Fromentin, J., & Bonhomeau, S.
Affiliations
  • AZTI (ES)
  • International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ES)
Venue
Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2015-03
Volume
113
Pages
102-112
ISSN
0967-0645 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2037723922
Cited by
194
References
98
Citations by year
2026: 26 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 8
FWCI
7.87
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Deep Sea Research Part II Topical Studies in Oceanography (publishedVersion)
  • HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) (submittedVersion)
  • Institutional Archive of Ifremer (French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea) (submittedVersion)
  • AZTI Institutional Repository (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
  • King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Repository (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • INFM-OAR (INFN Catania) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Funders
  • EU Marie Curie EST
  • METAOCEANS (MEST-CT-2005–019678)
  • European Commission (264933)
  • EURO-BASIN: European Union Basin-scale Analysis, Synthesis and Integration
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Aquatic Science › Marine and fisheries research
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Nature and Landscape Conservation › Fish Ecology and Management Studies
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Aquatic Science › Fish Biology and Ecology Studies
Keywords
tuna, habitat preference, ecosystem approach to fisheries, Thunnus thynnus, southern bluefin tuna, albacore tuna, bigeye tuna, yellowfin tuna, skipjack tuna, chlorophyll, sea level anomalies, mixed layer depth, water column stratification, anoxic waters

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-16, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-16 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Cited sources are checked with a language model’s help (gpt-6-sol).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review