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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 56(5)

Mixing of populations or year class twinning in Norwegian spring spawning herring?

Å. Husebø A C , A. Slotte A , L. A. W. Clausen B and H. Mosegaard B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Institute of Marine Research (IMR), PO Box 1870, Nordnes, N-5870 Bergen, Norway.

B Danish Institute for Fisheries Research, Charlottenlund Castle, DK-2920 Charlottenlund, Denmark.

C Corresponding author. Email: aase.huseboe@imr.no

Marine and Freshwater Research 56(5) 763-772 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF04170
Submitted: 16 July 2004  Accepted: 4 March 2005   Published: 24 July 2005

Abstract

In the present study, we question whether the mixing of autumn spawning herring with Norwegian spring spawning herring (Clupea harengus L.) in feeding and wintering areas is a result of year class twinning, that is, that they hatched in spring as products of the spring spawning stock, but ended up spawning in autumn. The otolith microstructure of the summer feeding autumn spawners (July 2001) was similar to the wintering autumn spawners (January 2002), stable and low in comparison with the sympatric spring spawners caught in the same two seasons. Hence, the otolith microstructure of the analysed larval herring seemed representative of their own spawning season. Data from 1982 to 2003 demonstrated that the fraction of autumn spawners by year class has been quite low at 1–14%, but relatively high in some of the weak year classes, indicating a different recruitment success between the spawning groups. Length at age and somatic weight at length did not differ between the spawning groups. In comparison, the neighbour North Sea autumn spawning herring were significantly smaller at the same age.

Extra keywords: daily increment, growth, North-east Atlantic, otolith microstructure.


Acknowledgments

We thank Elna Sælen Meland and Jostein Røttingen at the IMR for reading the herring scales and Øyvind Tangen for assistance with the map. The authors would also like to thank two anonymous referees and the guest editor, Steven Campana, for their valuable comments on a previous draft of this manuscript. Thanks also to the Norwegian Research Council that funded the present study.


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