QUAST: BODY WEIGHT, FAT, AND GONADS OF PACIFIC HERRING 



Table 1 .—Growth characteristics and growth parameters of Pacific herring from the northeastern Pacific Ocean 

 and eastern Bering Sea, based on data from the present study and from the literature. Growth is portrayed by 

 the Walford version of the constant-proportion growth model (see text). Because Reid's (1971) data were gathered 

 from a summer fishery, body lengths are longer than they were at the time of annulus formation and may not 

 be comparable to back-calculated data or to lengths-at-terminal-age collected on or near the time of annulus 

 formation. The inflections column refers to the junction of juvenile stanzas with stanzas for adults. Juvenile stanzas 

 on the Walford graphs were fit by eye to sizes at ages 1 and 2, or ages 1-3; adult stanzas were fit by least squares. 



No inflection apparent. 



2 Blankenbeckler, D. 1978. Age, growth, maturation, and parasite occurrence of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasi) from 

 southeastern Alaska, 1974 through 1976. Alaska Dep. Fish Game, Tech. Data Rep. 39, 88 p. 



and 2, and the adult stanza was steeper for herring 

 from Tomales Bay. The Bering Sea herring, how- 

 ever, inflected to a steeper slope at age 2 rather than 

 age 3. Environment may not determine the time 

 of inflection in Pacific herring because juveniles 

 both from the Bering Sea and Tomales Bay had 

 similar BL's during the first 2 yr (Fig. 3) although 

 the environments of the locales probably differ 

 greatly. 



Weight-Length Relationships 



Total weight (W, grams) relates to BL (milli- 

 meters) in fresh Pacific herring from the Auke Bay 

 vicinity as W = (4.4467 x 10" 6 )BL 3 - 2232 (N = 491; 

 R 2 = 0.97). The lower confidence limit for the ex- 

 ponent exceeds 3.0, and the exponent exceeds 3.0 

 in reports for herring in most locales; e.g., Pacific 

 herring from Tomales Bay, 2.93 (Spratt 1981); San 

 Francisco Bay, 3.23 (Spratt 1981); the east coast of 

 Vancouver Island, 3.26 (Hart et al. 1940), and 

 Barkley Sound, British Columbia, 3.46 (Hart et al. 

 1940); and in Atlantic herring, 3.15 and 3.5 (Hart 

 et al. 1940). Many differences between exponents, 

 as cited, may not be biologically significant because 

 weight-length relationships vary seasonally and be- 

 tween sexes, even in eviscerated fish. The exponent 

 for the relationship between BL and total weight 

 probably exceeds 3.0 in healthy herring populations 

 because, as noted in later paragraphs, both eviscer- 



ated and gonad fresh weights also have exponents 

 >3.0 when related to BL. 



Eviscerated weight of Auke Bay herring also had 

 an exponential relationship to BL that significantly 

 exceeded 3.0 [(W = 5.0894 x 10" 6 )BL 3 16640 ; Fig. 

 4]. In theory, evisceration avoids large potential 

 weight variations caused by seasonal changes in 

 gonads and fat deposits about the viscera, and vari- 

 able food content; yet, eviscerated weight (Sy  x = 

 0.1030) was at least as variable a function of BL as 

 total weight (Sy -x = 0.0953) in the same specimens, 

 and both total weight and eviscerated weight had 

 the same coefficient of determination (0.97). The 

 lack of decreased variability in the weight of evis- 

 cerated herring, as a function of BL, compared with 

 whole fish is evidence that building of visceral fat 

 and gonads does not simply add weight, but rather 

 that some compensatory mechanism may act be- 

 tween these apparent weight sources and the evis- 

 cerated body. 



In contrast to the results of Hart et al. (1940), 

 Hickling (1940) found markedly low exponents, 2.13 

 and 2.37, for the relationship between eviscerated 

 weight and BL for Atlantic herring from the North 

 Sea, values that are strikingly lower than those ex- 

 pected for fishes in general. For example, Quast 

 (1968) gave exponents of 2.7-4.5 for 32 species of 

 marine fishes in southeastern California, including 

 3.9 for the northern anchovy, Engraulis mordax. 

 Hickling' s exponents may be too low because the 



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