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Age Determination Methods for Northwest Atlantic Species
This manual documents age determination techniques used by staff at the Woods Hole Laboratory to…
Atlantic Herring
Atlantic Herring
Clupea harengus
Also Known As
Herring, Sea herring, Sild, Common herring, Labrador herring, Sardine, Sperling
Quick Facts
Region
New England/Mid-Atlantic,
Southeast
About the Species
U.S. wild-caught Atlantic herring is a smart seafood choice because it is sustainably managed and responsibly harvested under U.S. regulations.
Population
Significantly below target population level. A rebuilding plan is being developed for the Atlantic herring stock.
Fishing Rate
At recommended levels.
Habitat Impacts
Fishing gears used to harvest Atlantic herring have minimal impacts on habitat.
Bycatch
Regulations are in place to minimize bycatch.
Population Status
- According to the 2020 stock assessment, Atlantic herring are overfished, but not subject to overfishing. Summary stock assessment information can be found on Stock SMART.
- Herring populations are naturally highly variable.
Appearance
- Atlantic herring are small schooling fish.
- They are silvery in color, with a bluish or greenish-blue back.
Biology
- Atlantic herring are one of nearly 200 herring species in the family Clupeidae.
- They grow quickly, up to 14 inches.
- They can live up to 15 years.
- They are able to reproduce when they reach age 4.
- Atlantic herring migrate in schools to areas where they feed, spawn, and spend the winter.
- They spawn as early as August in Nova Scotia and eastern Maine and from October through November in the southern Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and Nantucket Shoals.
- Female herring can produce 30,000 to 200,000 eggs.
- They deposit their eggs on rock, gravel, or sand ocean bottom.
- Schools of herring can produce so many eggs that they cover the ocean bottom in a dense carpet of eggs several centimeters thick.
- The eggs usually hatch in 7 to 10 days, depending on temperature.
- By late spring, larvae grow into juvenile herring, which form large schools in coastal waters during the summer.
- Atlantic herring is an important species in the food web of the northwest Atlantic Ocean.
- A variety of bottom-dwelling fish—including winter flounder, cod, haddock, and red hake—feed on herring eggs.
- Juvenile herring are heavily preyed upon due to their abundance and small size. A number of fish, sharks, skates, marine mammals, and seabirds prey on herring.
- Atlantic herring feed on zooplankton (tiny floating animals), krill, and fish larvae.
Where They Live
- Atlantic herring are found on both sides of the North Atlantic. In the western North Atlantic, they are found from Labrador to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
Fishery Management
- The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission coordinates management of the herring fishery in state waters, and the New England Fishery Management Council manages the fishery in federal waters. The two entities develop their regulations in close coordination. Individual states are responsible for implementing regulations recommended by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and NOAA Fisheries is responsible for implementing regulations recommended by the New England Fishery Management Council.
- Managed under the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan and Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Herring:
- An annual catch limit for the entire herring fishery based upon scientific information on the status of the stock.
- Managers divide the catch limit into four area-specific limits. When an area-specific limit is reached, the directed fishery in that area is prohibited and only incidental catches of herring are allowed.
- A limited access permit program limits the number of vessels that can participate in the directed fishery for herring. Vessels that do not qualify for a limited access permit can be issued an open access permit, allowing them to harvest a small amount of herring (6,600 pounds) per day or per trip.
- Limits on the amount of herring a vessel can possess in one day or on one trip, depending on the type of permit.
- The Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Herring contains measures that close areas to herring fishing when herring are spawning.
- Catch reductions have been put in place for 2018-2021 to prevent overfishing and reduce the risk that the stock will become overfished.
Harvest
- Commercial fishery:
- In 2019, commercial landings of Atlantic herring totaled more than 24.7 million pounds and were valued at more than $9.1 million, according to the NOAA Fisheries commercial fishing landings database. These figures may not match other agency sources of data due to confidential information.
- During the past decade, the United States has accounted for 78 percent of the total herring harvest, with Canada harvesting the remainder.
- The Atlantic herring fishery is extremely valuable to the economy in the Northeast United States. Herring are sold frozen, salted, or canned as sardines in both U.S. and international markets and provide affordable bait to fishermen targeting lobster, blue crab, and tuna.
- Gear types, habitat impacts, and bycatch:
- Historically, Gulf of Maine herring were harvested along the coast in fixed-gear weirs (a fence of long stakes driven into the ground with nets arranged in a circle). Today, herring are primarily harvested by mid-water trawlers and purse seiners.
- Mid-water trawlers deploy and tow a net in the water column to catch schooling fish such as herring. The large front end of the net herds schooling fish toward the narrow back end, where they become trapped.
- Purse seiners catch schooling fish near the surface by encircling them with a net. When the net is around the school, fishermen lift up a wire that runs through the bottom of the net, closing the “purse” from below.
- Fisheries that harvest groundfish (such as cod and haddock) and herring operate in the same areas during the same seasons. Herring vessels may incidentally catch groundfish (mainly haddock). Managers set a cap on the amount of haddock that can be caught by the herring midwater trawl fishery.
- The Atlantic herring fishery can incidentally catch marine mammals. Currently, these takes are below limits that would require mitigation under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
- Management measures to reduce marine mammal interactions include research, outreach to educate fisherman about actions they can take in the event of a marine mammal interaction, and efforts to communicate interaction hotspots to fishermen.
Featured News
Exempted Fishing
Fishing with Small-Mesh Bottom Trawl Gear
The Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery Management Plan prohibits fishing with small-mesh bottom trawl gear, except seasonally in specific exemption areas. These exemption areas are described in the table and map below and indicate where and when vessels may fish with small-mesh bottom trawl gear.
Atlantic herring and Atlantic mackerel may be retained by vessels fishing with small-mesh bottom trawl gear in the exemption areas, provided vessels comply with all season, area, and gear requirements, possession limits, and are issued a whiting (Category K Open Access Northeast Multispecies) permit or a limited access Northeast multispecies permit. Specific requirements for each area can be found on the linked webpages within the table below. River herring and shad may not be retained when fishing with small-mesh bottom trawl gear in these exemption areas, with the exception that alewife may be retained in the Gulf of Maine Grate Raised Footrope Trawl Exemption Area.
A Letter of Authorization (LOA) is required to participate in some of these exemption areas. Permits and LOAs can be obtained from our Permits Office at (978) 282-8438, or online by visiting our Forms and Applications webpage. If you have questions about these exemption areas, please call the Sustainable Fisheries Division at (978) 281-9315.
Small-Mesh Exemption Areas
| Area Name | Season | LOA Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Gulf of Maine Grate Raised Footrope Trawl Whiting Fishery Exemption Area | July 1 - November 30 | No |
| Cultivator Shoal Whiting Fishery Exemption Area | June 15 - October 31 | Yes |
| Small-Mesh Exemption Areas 1 & 2 |
Small-Mesh Area 1: July 15 - November 15 Small-Mesh Area 2: January 1 - June 30 |
No |
| Raised Footrope Trawl Exempted Whiting Fishery Areas (Cape Cod) |
September 1 - November 20 September 1 - December 31 |
Yes |
Science Overview
Overfishing Definition/Status Determination Criteria:
Framework 6 to the Herring Fishery Management Plan(currently being drafted) would update the overfished and overfishing definitions for the herring fishery to make them more consistent with the most recent stock assessment in 2018. The current overfished and overfishing definitions are as follows:
If stock biomass is equal or greater than BMSY, overfishing occurs when fishing mortality exceeds FMSY. If stock biomass is below BMSY, overfishing occurs when fishing mortality exceeds the level that has a 50 percent probability to rebuild stock biomass to BMSY in 5 years (FThreshold). The stock is in an overfished condition when stock biomass is below ½ BMSY and overfishing occurs when fishing mortality exceeds FThreshold. These reference points are thresholds and form the basis for the control rule.
The control rule also specifies risk-averse fishing mortality targets, accounting for the uncertainty in the estimate of FMSY. If stock biomass is equal to or greater than 1/2BMSY, the target fishing mortality will be the lower level of the 80 percent confidence interval about FMSY. When biomass is below BMSY, the target fishing mortality will be reduced consistent with the five-year rebuilding schedule used to determine FThreshold.
Current Stock Status
In June of 2018, a new Northeast Regional Stock Assessment Workshop (SAW), reviewed by the Stock Assessment Review Committee (SARC), for herring was completed. The assessment concluded that although herring was not overfished and overfishing was not occurring in 2017, the stock was declining due to poor recruitment. The stock assessment estimated that recruitment had been at historic lows during the most recent 5 years (2013–2017). The final assessment summary report is available on the Northeast Fisheries Science Center website.
The assessment projected that poor recruitment of herring would likely result in a substantial decline in biomass, but that the biomass should increase after reaching a low in 2019 if recruitment returns to historic average levels. The SAW/SARC concluded that catch reductions would be necessary during 2018–2021 in prevent overfishing and to lower the risk of the stock becoming overfished. Based on stock assessment projections, NOAA Fisheries reduced the 2018 ACL to 49,900 mt to lessen the risk of overfishing (Table 3). This reduction was based on a 50 percent probability of preventing overfishing in 2018. NOAA Fisheries set this level based on the newly projected overfishing limit (OFL) for 2018 out of precaution to prevent overfishing while allowing the fishery to achieve optimum yield (OY).
Current Management
The new specifications for the 2019–2021 fishing years were not yet in place January 1, 2019, so the amended 2018 specifications rolled over and became effective for 2019. Because the catch limits that rolled over were in excess of the OFL, the New England Council recommended and NOAA Fisheries enacted an inseason adjustment that reduced the rolled-over 2018 limits to acceptable levels for 2019. The adjustments reduced the OFL and ABC to 30,668 mt and 21,266 mt respectively for the 2019 fishing year, and reduced the ACL to 15,065 mt. These specifications will remain in place until Framework 6 (which includes the 2019–2021 specifications) becomes effective (expected in early 2020).
At their September 2018 meeting, the New England Council approved an ABC control rule in Amendment 8 to the Herring FMP that, if approved by NOAA Fisheries, would be used to set specifications for the herring fishery in future years. This control rule is a more conservative management approach than the interim control rule (used in previous specification cycles) because a portion of the available catch would be set aside to explicitly account for the role of herring as forage in the ecosystem. The ABC control rule would cap overall fishing mortality at 80 percent of the maximum sustainable yield (known as FMSY). Under previous control rules, herring harvest could occur at 100% of the FMSY.
Amendment 8 would also set up an inshore buffer that would disallow any midwater trawl vessels from fishing within 15 miles of shore in any water east/north of a perpendicular line extending due south from the border between Rhode Island and Connecticut. In addition, midwater trawl vessels would not be able to fish in boxes (i.e. 30 minute squares) surrounding Cape Cod (boxes 99, 100, 114, 115, and 123). Amendment 8 has not yet been reviewed or approved by NOAA Fisheries, but that decision is expected in late 2019.
2020 Stock Assessment and 2021–2023 Specifications
The Northeast Fishery Science Center has scheduled the next stock assessment workshop for Atlantic herring in June 2020. This stock assessment will inform development of the specifications for 2021–2023. It is anticipated that the 2021–2023 specifications will be completed and become effective in early 2021, and will thus replace the last year of the 2019–2021 specifications that are currently being finalized in Herring Framework 6.
Future stock assessments are schedule to continue on a biennial basis. As such, specification will continue to be developed every two years, although they will continue to set catch limits on a 3-year cycle. Changes to the third year of the specification cycle will be considered based on the results of the stock assessment.