ABUNDANCE, DISTRIBUTION, MOVEMENTS, AND LENGTHS OF LARVAL 

 HERRING ALONG THE WESTERN COAST OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



Joseph J. Graham, Stanley B. Chenoweth, and Clarence W. Davis' 



ABSTRACT 



This paper describes the abundance, distribution, movements, and lengths of larval 

 herring along the western coast of the Gulf of Maine. Larvae were most numerous in 

 the catches throughout the coast in the autumn, reached a low in the winter, and increased 

 in the spring. Growth in the autumn is estimated at 1 to 1.3 mm per 5-day intervals. 

 Larval mortality was highest in the autumn, lower in the winter, and lowest in the spring. 

 The mortality in the winter usually varied with their condition and determined the sub- 

 sequent level of spring abundance. We selected three different types of estimates as 

 desirable for predicting the recruitment of immature herring to the sardine fishery of 

 Maine: (1) winter mortality, (2) larval condition in the winter, and (3) spring 

 abundance. 



The commercial catch of 2-year-old Atlantic 

 herring, Clupea harengus harengus Linnaeus, 

 fluctuates annually along the western coast of 

 the Gulf of Maine. The Maine sardine industry 

 processes these immature herring, but cannot 

 anticipate the amount of fish available for can- 

 ning each year. One approach to this problem 

 is to determine whether the abundance of her- 

 ring during their first year of life is related to 

 the number of fish entering the fishery. To 

 establish whether such a relationship exists, the 

 desirable estimate of abundance or its correl- 

 ative must be determined first. We describe the 

 distribution, abundance, movements, and lengths 

 of larval herring along the western coast of the 

 Gulf of Maine. We discuss the seasonal changes 

 in larval abundance caused by their mortality 

 and the relation of the sources of larvae to their 

 distribution and movements. From these anal- 

 yses we selected three types of estimates: (1) 

 winter mortality, (2) larval condition in the 

 winter, and (3) spring abundance. 



Larval herring occur throughout the Gulf of 

 Maine-Georges Bank area. They concentrate 

 in the offshore bank area (Tibbo et al., 1958); 

 along the southeastern coast of Nova Scotia 



^ National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast Fish- 

 eries Center, Boothbay Harbor Laboratory, W. Boothbay 

 Harbor, ME 04575. 



(Das, 1968) ' ; and the western coast of the Gulf 

 of Maine (Graham and Boyar, 1965). During 

 their relatively long larval period, herring may 

 drift with the residual currents about the banks 

 and in the Gulf (Colton and Temple, 1961; Das, 

 1968, see footnote 2). Racial studies show that 

 these larval herring have three parental stocks; 

 namely, Georges Bank, the southern coast of 

 Nova Scotia, and the western coast of the Gulf 

 of Maine (Anthony and Boyar, 1968; Ridgway, 

 Lewis, and Sherburne, 1969). The relation be- 

 tween the parental stocks and the larvae is not 

 clear. 



In the Boothbay area of the Maine coast, her- 

 ring were found in estuaries and embayments 

 throughout their larval life (Graham and Boyar, 

 1965). In this area larval catches reached a 

 peak in the autumn shortly after hatching and 

 declined to a minimum during winter. Catches 

 were sporadic in the spring and in May the fish 

 metamorphosed. Evidence that in the spring 

 the larger larvae avoided our conventional sam- 

 pling gear (Gulf III and meter nets) led to the 

 development of the Boothbay Depressor trawl 

 (Graham and Vaughan, 1966) and buoyed and 



Manuscript accepted October 1971. 



FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 70, NO. 2, 1972. 



^ Das, N. 1968. Spawning, distribution, survival, and 

 growth of larval herring (Clupea harengus L.) in rela- 

 tion to hydrographic conditions in the Bay of Fundy. 

 Fish. Res, Board Can., Tech. Rep. 88, 129 p. 



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