Reports on surveys of herring larvae in the North Sea and adjacent waters, 1972–1973

Report on the international surveys of herring larvae in the North Sea and adjacent waters in 1972/73

 This report gives the results of the sixth international survey of herring larvae in the North Sea and adjacent waters. These surveys were started in 1967, following a recommendation of the ICES Herring Committee in 1966. They are intended to provide measures of changes in the herring spawning stocks which are independent of catch per unit effort data. Results of previous surveys are published in Saville (1970), Boëtius & McKay (1970), Wood (1971), Zijlstra (1972) and Schnack (1973).

Herring larvae to the West of Scotland in the autumn of 1972

Acting on a request from the Liaison Committee of ICES the North Sea Herring Assessment Working Group met in December 1969 to consider the state of the herring stocks around Ireland and north-west of Scotland. The report of this working group recommended that, in order to use abundance estimates of herring larvae for future stock assessments in this area, regular sampling should be initiated (Anon 1971).
Surveys of this area were carried out by the Fisheries Laboratory, Lowestoft, in 1965 and 1971 (Wood 1971, 1973) and by the Fisheries Laboratory, Lowestoft and the Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen in 1972. These surveys in 1972 are reported here.