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Fishery and Sea ResourcesFigure 1: Total catch and stock biomass estimated by VPA of a) anchovy and b) sardineare compared over years; split year was used for anchovy. Redrawn from Cardinale etal., [15].3 Results and DiscussionThe analysis showed a significant correlationbetween anchovy recruitment and bothPo River flow rate (Figure 2 and 3) andautumn SSE and ESE wind stress [16].The presence of high river flow rates togetherwith moderate wind stress influencethe regime of the Western AdriaticCoastal Current (WACC): nutrient rich watersmove offshore sustaining an increasedzooplankton and phytoplankton biomass.In particular, zooplankton is really importantfor both the species as far as recentstudies indicate that European anchovyfeed on zooplankton more than phytoplankton[22]. The influence of the NAOindex is less clear: it could have a linkwith salinity variation in the intermediatelayer of the Adriatic Sea, with positive valuesbeing associated with higher salinity[23, 1]. On the other hand, Po River flowrate seems to have some positive influenceon sardine recruitment, but the effects arenot statistically significant as in the case ofanchovy (Figure 4). A significant positivecorrelation between the recruitment of sardineand the autumn NAO index of the previousyear was observed [17]. The resultsrelative to the Po River flow rate are consis-1900