Pacific herring

The pacific herring fishery has always been a major fishery on Canada’s Pacific coast. After the collapse of the sardine fishery in the late 1940s, Pacific herring were actively fished for reduction to fish meal and fish oil.

Pacific herring have fewer vertebrae the keel scales between the pectoral and ventral fins are poorly developed or absent and teeth on the vomer bone are weak or absent. Eggs are shed on seaweed, usually in shore waters at a depth to 10-15 m at temperatures of 0 -10.7 ° C (rarely 15 ° C).

Clupea pallasii pallasii inhabits the coasts of the northern Pacific Ocean from the Bering Strait to Korea and in the Arctic Sea to the mouth of the Lena Rover. On the North America coast, it distribution extends from California to Nome, Alaska.

 Fish reach sexual maturity at 2-3 years and reach 50 cm in length. The fish are most abundant off Alaska and British Colombia and are commercially important, particularly for herring roe.
Pacific herring

Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus)

A member of the Clupeidae family of herring, the Atlantic herring is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s most numerous fish and is certainly one of the world’s most valuable fish.

In the Gulf of Maine, Atlantic herring provide forage for numerous other species and support a commercially critical New England fishery.

Herring have been heavily exploited for well over 150 years, providing an extensive historical record for analysis.

The Atlantic herring is silvery with a bluish or greenish-blue back and an elongated body. The dorsal fin begins at about the middle of the body, and there are 39 or 47 weakly developed ventral scutes. At the midline of the belly are scales that form a sharp-edged ridge. The Atlantic herring's body is flattened side to side. This shape both streamlines the fish and makes it hard for predators to spot. A counter- shading pattern of a dark back and silvery underside makes the herring even harder to detect

This species schools in coastal waters and have been recorded in temperatures of 34 to 64 °F. The present distribution of the Atlantic herring reflects occurs in the northeast Atlantic from where it invaded the freshwater estuaries of northern Russia.

The Atlantic herring is distributed from Cape Hatteras (North Carolina) to Greenland in the western North Atlantic and from the Bay of Biscay to Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya in the eastern Atlantic. It also enters the White Sea.
Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus)

The Sea Herring

The Sea Herring
Among the various categories of fish used by humans for food, one of the most important is the family Clupeidae comprising pelagic species that travel in groups or schools near the ocean surface.

In the United States sea herring are found in ocean waters from Alaska to the state of Washington on the West Coast, and from Labrador to Cape Hatteras on the East Coast.

Sea herring are plankton feeders, eating the various microscopic plants and animals (diatoms, larvae of various shellfish, etc) when very young and, as adults, eating small shrimp, small fish, and so on. When unmolested, the sea herring may live to an age of 20 years or more.

Most sea herring are caught with purse seines, but some are caught with pound traps or weirs (similar to pound traps but constructed with poles and brush). Gill nets are sometimes used to catch these fish.
The Sea Herring