Atlantic Herring ( Clupea harengus) in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean: Dynamics of Nested Population Components under Several Harvest Regimes
Abstract The Atlantic herring, Clupea harengus L., is an abundant marine fish species with a distribution that encompasses coastal and continental shelf regions on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean. Herring are pelagic, and individuals usually aggregate in schools and can form mammoth shoals du...
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| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | unknown |
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Oxford University PressNew York, NY
2004
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195166460.003.0022 https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52323759/isbn-9780195166460-book-part-22.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract The Atlantic herring, Clupea harengus L., is an abundant marine fish species with a distribution that encompasses coastal and continental shelf regions on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean. Herring are pelagic, and individuals usually aggregate in schools and can form mammoth shoals during the spawning and overwintering seasons. Herring are considered “population rich” (Sinclair 1988) in that they form many populations or population “complexes” within their transoceanic distribution, including a number of separate populations in Canadian jurisdictional waters (Iles and Sinclair 1982, Stephenson et al. 2001). Iles and Sinclair (1982) have suggested that geographically stable oceanographic features serve as larval retention areas and determine the distribution of herring populations. These features may serve additionally as incomplete barriers to larval exchange among major population complexes. Herring populations may mix during overwintering and feeding seasons, but then separate during the spawning period. Adults return to discrete spawning areas, some of which are used every year and others only occasionally, and deposit eggs directly upon the seabed. Spawners are considered to exhibit a fair degree of interannual fidelity to specific spawning grounds and, thus, are presumed to “home” to their natal spawning areas (e.g., Iles and Sinclair 1982, Sinclair 1988). McQuinn (1997) proposed that this benthic spawning distribution and population dynamics of the Atlantic herring fit within the metapopulation concept. Ware and Schweigert (2001) used a metapopulation approach to model the structure and dynamics of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasi), a closely related species. |
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