Seasonal surface warmth gave no clear common link to deeper catches in four US trawl samples in 1982-2019

We tested whether warm survey seasons were linked to deeper catches relative to sampled depth within strata. We used eastern Bering Sea and Northeast US fall surveys in 1982-2000 and 2001-2019. Fixed samples contained 71 strata, 22,753 hauls and regional lists of 59 and 62 persistent taxa. We rebuilt a published exact depth decomposition and matched NOAA ERSST v5 surface temperature to the same strata. Four annual models controlled linear year and the later Northeast survey transition. Within-stratum slopes were 0.35, 0.18, -0.43 and -1.20 m per C. All eight adjusted total and within-stratum intervals included zero. Covariance-lag, survey-step and consecutive-year checks did not establish a common deeper-catch link. This does not show no temperature effect. Surface temperature is a coarse proxy for bottom exposure. Selected taxa, catchability, changing stations and short series limit inference. The package preserves source hashes, sufficient evidence, reused code, all estimates and independent numerical checks.

species distributions · temperature · depth · trawl survey · observation bias · OceanAdapt · regional replication · null result