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reconstructed from 20 records of tree-ring width from North America, Scandinavia,

Siberia and Mongolia over the past three centuries (D'Arrigo et al., 1999, Figure 3). The

latter index is only based on continental data, so that it is likely to be a poorer descriptor

of changes in temperature over the North Atlantic than the previous one. However, it

allows the early period of the trap catches to be covered. Secondly, we investigated the

possible relationships between temperature and trap catches at a regional scale, but over

a shorter time period, using four instrumental temperature time series recorded at

stations near to the traps (Fig. 1), i.e. Palermo in Sicily (Brunetti et al., 2000), Cagliari

in Sardinia (Brunetti et al., 2000), Cadix, at the Straight of Gibraltar (Wheeler,

Sunderland Polytechnic, United Kingdom, pers.com.), Dar-El-Beida in Algeria (Global

Historical Climatology Network data base).

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