Environmental and climate variability drive population size of annual penaeid shrimp in a large lagoonal estuary

Species with short life spans frequently show a close relationship between population abundance and environmental variation making these organisms potential indicator species of climatic variability. White (Penaeus setiferus), brown (P. aztecus), and pink (P. duorarum) penaeid shrimp typically have an annual life history and are of enormous ecological, cultural, and economic value to the southeastern United States and Gulf of Mexico. Within North Carolina, all three species rely on the Pamlico Sound, a large estuarine system that straddles Cape Hatteras, one of the most significant climate and biogeographic breaks in the world, as a nursery area. These characteristics make penaeid species within the Pamlico Sound a critical species-habitat complex for assessing climate impacts on fisheries. However, a comprehensive analysis of the influence of the environmental conditions that influence penaeid shrimp populations has been lacking in North Carolina. In this study, we used more than 30 ye..., The dataset (BrownShrimpModelDataFrameP120.csv) represents the annual mean catch per unit effort (CPUE) for the tidal creek trawl survey (P120, 1986–2019) run by the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries (NC DMF) merged with environmental variables that were used in our model. The dataset (SpatialModelDataSetP195.csv) is CPUE data for each site, season, and year for the Pamlico Sound trawl survey (P195, 1987–2019) survey run by NC DMF. The datasets (AdultBrownShrimpEnviroModel.csv, AdultWhiteShrimpEnviroModel.csv, AdultPinkShrimpEnviroModel.csv) include estimates of the number of shrimp in Pamlico Sound derived from spatial models built using P195 CPUE data merged with environmental variables that were used in our models., These datasets are CSV files and are open-source.