Pacific Herring roe catch data for British Columbia. There are five major stock assessment regions: Haida Gwaii, Prince Rupert District, Central Coast, Strait of Georgia, and West Coast of Vancouver Island; and two minor stock assessment regions: Area 2W and Area 27. Catch that occurred outside of the major and minor stock assessment regions is recorded as ‘other’. Herring roe catch data is maintained in the Herring stock assessment database. The sum of catch is in metric tonnes for a specified time frame, geographical location, and gear type. Due to privacy, catch where less than three parties fished in a given area and time frame cannot be released. In these cases, ‘WP’ will appear in this field.

Herring biological (fish and sample) data as part of Herring Stock Assessment database

Atlantic herring. Concentration, breeding areas and larval retention areas of Atlantic Herring in the St. Lawrence Estuary.Data extracted from the Fish Habitat Management Information System (FHAMIS).Concentration areas, spawning sites and breeding areas of Atlantic herring according to a literature review of documents produced between 1977 and 1998.

Fecundity of Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) was estimated within five spawning areas (German Bank, Scots Bay, Seal Island, Southern Shore Nova Scotia, and Eastern Shore Nova Scotia) in Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) areas 4WX in 2019 and 2020. The objective of this project was to describe the fecundity-at-size (weight, length, and age) relationships among spawning grounds, compare these relationships to historical fecundity-at-size relationships, and assess the influence of changes in weight-at-age and fecundity over time to the reproductive potential of a unit of spawning stock biomass.Cite this data as: Barrett T. Data of: Fecundity of Herring in Divisions 4WX. Published: September 2021. Population Ecology Division, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, St. Andrews, N.B. https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/e39b1318-c9f7-4686-b5e5-7d838c8ac99a

Herring Section shapefile - used for spatial analysis/presentation of data from Herring Stock Assessment Database.

Herring Permanent Spawn Transects (geodatabase) - used for herring spawn survey program and spatial analysis/presentation of spawn data from Herring Stock Assessment Database (including creation of spawn polygons).

Coastline segments indicating herring spawing sites along the coastline of British Columbia. Attribute information includes relative importance, spawing frequency and spawn index. CRIMS is a legacy dataset of BC coastal resource data that was acquired in a systematic and synoptic manner from 1979 and was intermittently updated throughout the years. Resource information was collected in nine study areas using a peer-reviewed provincial Resource Information Standards Committee consisting of DFO Fishery Officers, First Nations, and other subject matter experts. There are currently no plans to update this legacy data.

Since 1991, an annual fishery-independent acoustic survey of early fall (September-October) concentrations of Herring has been conducted in the sGSL. The standard annual survey area occurs in the 4Tmno areas where both NAFO Div. 4T Herring spawning components aggregate in the fall. The survey uses a random stratified design of parallel transects within predefined strata. Surveys are conducted at night and use two vessels: an acoustic vessel to quantify the fish schools biomass using a hull-mounted 120 KHz split-beam transducer, and a fishing vessel to sample aggregates of fish with a pelagic trawl (details in LeBlanc et al. 2015; see also LeBlanc and Dale 1996).Trawl samples are used to separate the estimated biomass by spawning component and age, determine species composition, and size distribution for the estimation of the target strength (LeBlanc and Dale 1996; LeBlanc et al. 2015).A standardized abundance index is generated from this acoustic survey. This index includes catch-at-age data since 1994.This survey also provides the age-disaggregated acoustic abundance index for ages 2 to 10 for spring spawners and fall spawners.

Fish holding areas (i.e. areas of concentration of salmon and herring, both adult and juvenile) in coastal British Columbia. Attribute information includes overall relative importance, species of salmon and other fish observed at various times throughout the year as well as information on spawning activity and larvae. CRIMS is a legacy dataset of BC coastal resource data that was acquired in a systematic and synoptic manner from 1979 and was intermittently updated throughout the years. Resource information was collected in nine study areas using a peer-reviewed provincial Resource Information Standards Committee consisting of DFO Fishery Officers, First Nations, and other subject matter experts. There are currently no plans to update this legacy data.

In 2015, a spawning ground acoustic survey that follows the design of the fishery-independent acoustic survey was initiated. This survey is the result of a partnership between DFO and fishery associations. The survey design uses random parallel transects within predefined strata. Surveys are conducted by fishermen in the fall fishing season according to protocols developed by DFO. The survey is conducted at night, during the weekend fishery closures except in Herring fishing area 16C and 16E in 2015 to 2017, where this region didn’t have weekend closures. The spawning ground acoustic survey is meant to provide a nightly estimate of spawning biomass among regions. It is analyzed in the same manner as the fishery-independent acoustic survey. The catches from the experimental nets are used to calibrate the spawning group specific target strength in order to obtain the nightly estimates of spawning biomass.