  Abiotic factors are fundamental drivers of the dynamics of wild marine fish
populations. Identifying and quantifying their influence on species targeted by
the fishing industry is difficult and very important for managing fisheries in
a changing climate. Using multiple regression, we investigated the influence of
both temperature and rainfall on the variability of recruitment of a tropical
species, the brown tiger prawn (Penaeus esculentus), in Moreton Bay which is
located near the southern limit of its distribution on the east coast of
Australia. A step-wise selection between environmental variables identified
that variations in recruitment from 1990 to 2014 were best explained by a
combination of temperature and spawning stock biomass. Temperature explains 35%
of recruitment variability and spawning stock biomass 33%. This analysis
suggests that increasing temperatures have increased recruitment of brown tiger
prawn in Moreton Bay.
