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 years of data from two fishery-independent trawl surveys in the Pamlico Sound to examine the spatial distribution and abundance of adult brown, white, and pink shrimp and the environmental drivers associated with adult shrimp abundance and juvenile brown shrimp recruitment using numerical models. Brown shrimp recruitment models demonstrate that years with higher temperature, salinity, offshore windstress, and North Atlantic Oscillation phase predict increased abundance of juveniles. Additionally, models predicting adult brown, white, and pink shrimp abundance illustrate the importance of winter temperatures, windstress, salinity, the North Atlantic Oscillation index, and the abundance of spawning adult populations from the previous year on shrimp abundance. Our findings show a high degree of variability in shrimp abundance is explained by climate and environmental variation and indicate the importance of understanding these relationships in order to predict the impact of climate variability within ecosystems and develop climate-based adaptive management strategies for marine populations.

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.