Abstract
From a stock size of >12MT in the mid-20th century, the Norwegian spring spawning herring was driven almost to extinction in the early 1970s, with significant social, economic and ecological consequences. The stock began to recover in the 1990s, but with radically different seasonal migration patterns from those prior to the collapse. There is provisional evidence for a link between the stock collapse and an abrupt change in North Atlantic climate that occurred in the mid-1960s. The project will analyse available long term time series of herring growth and abundance in relation to climate, hydrography and biological production at lower trophic levels. The project will seek a process orientated oceanographic and ecological justification for the statistical relationship between herring and climate, and develop state-of-the-art mathematical models to aid prediction of the consequences of climate changes in the future.
Norway