Abstract

It is well known that environmental fluctuations and fishing efforts modify fishing patterns in various parts of the world. One of the most affected areas is northern Chile. The reduction of the gaps in the implementation of national fisheries' management policies and the basic knowledge that supports the making of such decisions are crucial. That is why in this research, a transfer function method with variable coefficients is proposed to forecast monthly disembarkation of anchovies and sardines in northern Chile, taking into account the incidence of large-scale climatic variables on landings. The method uses a least squares procedure and wavelets to expand the coefficients of the transfer function. Linear estimators of the time varying coefficients are proposed, followed by a truncation of the wavelet expansion up to an appropriate scale. Finally, the estimators for the transfer function coefficients are obtained by using the inverse wavelet transformation. Research results suggest that the transfer function models with variable coefficients fit the behavior of the anchovies' landing with great accuracy, while the use of transfer function models with constant coefficients fits sardines' landings better. Both fisheries' landings could be explained to a large extent from the large scale climatic variables.