Report of the Working Group on North Sea Young Herring Surveys

Part of the results of the 1965-1970 surveys were reported on a yearly basis to the Pelagic Fish Northern Committee and were published from 1968 onwards in Annales Biologiques.

During its first session the Group decided that the meeting should have the following objectives:

1. To study the relation between the data on the numbers of herring caught per one hour's trawling during the 1965-1970 surveys, as an index of abundance of young herring in the North Sea, and the subsequent recruitment to the autumn spawning populations in the North sea.

2. to investigate changes that may have occurred in the distribution of young herring in the North Sea in the different survey years and their relation to changes in the composition of the young herring stock.

3. To study the results of the acoustic surveys made during the 1971 young herring survey aa alternative method of estimating the abundance of young herring in the North sea.