Variability of Sea Surface Temperature in Fisheries Management Area 715, Indonesia and its Relation to The Monsoon, Enso and Fishery Production

Sea surface temperature (SST) is one of the important oceanographic and climate parameters. Its variability and anomalies often influence the environment and organisms, both in the oceans and on land. This study aims to identify the variability of SST and help the fisheries community to understand how climate phenomena such as ENSO and monsoonal phases (represented by wind speed) are related to SST and fishery production in Fisheries Management Area (FMA) 715. SST was measured at Parimo, which represents conditions in the western part of the area inside Tomini Bay, and at Bitung, which represents SST in the open ocean, with a more exposured geographical position. SST was derived from MODIS satellite imagery, downloaded from the oceancolor database (https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/) with a 4 km spatial resolution, from January 2009 to December 2018. Wind speed data, historical El Niño or La Niña events, and fish production data were also used in the study. Pearson’s correlation (Walpole, 1993) was used to test the relationship between SST variability or anomaly and ENSO and monsoons. The results show that the SST characteristics and variability of the Parimo and Bitung waters are very different, although they both lie in the same FMA 715. SST in Parimo waters is warmer, but with lower variability than in Bitung waters. SST in Parimo has a low correlation with ENSO (r=0.06, n=66), low correlation with wind speed (r=-0.29, n=120), with also a low correlation between SST anomaly and ENSO (r=0.05, n=66). SST in Bitung has a higher, but inverse, correlation with ENSO (r=-0.53, n=66), high correlation with wind speed (r=-0.60, n=119), with also a high correlation between SST anomaly and ENSO (r=-0.74, n=66). Unlike in other parts of Indonesia, fishery production in Parimo, or the western part inside Tomini Bay, is not affected by ENSO events.