TEMPORAL AND SPA TIAL VARIATION OF NIGHTTIME FISHING GROUND DERIVED FROM SATELLITE IMAGERY

We examined the relationship between the 50m temperature estimated by remote sensing sea surface temperature (SST) and fishing ground (squid fishing ground) detected by nighttime visible channel defense meteorological satellite program (DMSP) I operational linescan system (OLS) images in the East/Japan Sea during 1993-2000. The results are as follows: The numbers of nighttime fishing boat were distributed the highest in October, and the lowest in April during this study. A nighttime fishing grounds have concentrated in the East Korea Warm Current region, coastal regions of Honshu Island, and Polar front region. Fishing grounds have distributed $11-18^{\circ}C$ of estimated 50m temperature from the satellite data. Relationship between estimated 50m temperature and the distributed fisheries boats showed that the north boundaries of fishing grounds have distributed the temperature of below $12^{\circ}C$ from 1996 to 2000 and that of $13-15^{\circ}C$ during 1993-1995 and 1997-1999. Stable fishing grounds appeared near the Korea/Tsushima Strait from January to March. The center of fishing grounds in spring (April-Jun) have moved to the northward than that in winter, and variations appeared largely in winter. In summer (July-September), center of fishing grounds have formed near the Uleung Island in the south east coast of Korea, and in autumn maximum fishing ground appeared in October, the fishing ground southward from November.