Sea surface temperature and the brown shrimp (Farfantepenaeus aztecus) population on the Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas continental shelves

Hindcasts are made using the simple linear statistical prediction model n=α+β·SSTA, where SSTA is the anomalous April-May departure of SST from the annual cycle. The cross-verified correlation between model and observed n is r = 0.77. A similar model for w gave r = 0.79. A prediction model for summer shrimp alone had cross-verified correlations r = 0.79 for n and 0.86 for w. Based on the 2004 April-May SST anomaly, annual and summer models predict that n and w should be close to average in 2004.