Acronym WESTHER
Category
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Title A multidisciplinary approach for the identification of herring stocks (Clupea harengus L.) west of the British Isles using biological tags and genetic markers Programme FP5
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source European Coordinator NA Coordinator email NA
Coordinator institution
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Institutions involved
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Start year 2003 End year 2006 Funding (€) € 2,084,887 Website https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/Q5RS-2002-01056/pl Summary Herring are important in EU commercial fisheries. They are highly migratory and it is not uncommon for them to be caught in management areas outside their area of origin. Assessment of stocks under these circumstances is problematic. The project aims to describe the inter-relationships of herring stocks to the west of the British Isles through a combination of traditional and novel biological tools and multivariate statistical techniques, to provide a framework for discriminating between stocks. The research, therefore, aims to provide an unambiguous classification of herring in the catch, such that they can be assigned to their areas of origin. This will provide the basis for a sound assessment for the management and the conservation of biodiversity. Of the different methods of stock discrimination used in this research project (i.e. morphometrics/meristics, genetics, parasitology, analysis of otolith microstructure and microchemistry), the morphometric work packages showed to have the highest success in allocating individual fish correctly to the spawning sample (stock) they were taken from. This holds true for both body- and otolith morphometry. Both morphometric analyses are based on digital images taken in a highly standardised fashion, allowing for a cost-cutting separation of the sampling and the actual process of analysis. A somewhat lower success in correct re-allocation was achieved by the analysis of the otolith microchemistry, while the analysis of fish parasites did not so much allow for an allocation of the adults to spawning groups but could in some cases pinpoint the aggregations of juvenile fish that these once must have been part of. The genetic analyses of the fish and their parasites did not facilitate an allocation of fish to spawning stocks, indicating a high degree of interbreeding, and the analysis of otolith microstructure expectedly supplied information on the timing of hatch of the individual fish but gave no clues as to their geographical origin. A fist analysis of the results indicates that the fish subject to a commercial fishery on the feeding grounds originates from the spawning grounds in the relative vicinity while in the northernmost of the management areas investigated (ICES VIaN) a large proportion of the fish probably has been spawned in the North Sea.
Keywords
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Marine Region
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