News

24 Oct 2005 - All sampling files have been updated today, including the last missing 2005juveniles and 2005mixed files. The complete set is also available as zip-archive - log on to the data section!

21 Aug 2005 - Really a year of high productivity in the Westher group: The third birth within a year was that of Liam Zimmermann!

19 July 2005 - Information for subsampling of the mixed aggregations-samples 4-M03A, 4-M04A and 5-M03A are now available (all in one xls-file, 25 kB).

18 May 2005 - Dates are now fixed for the 4th and final meeting, to be held in Faro/Portugal from 08 to 11 Nov 2005. Check the meeting section for upcoming information.

02 Mar 2005 - Reproduction success in the Westher group, part II: Indira Kelly was born today - again all the best from the group for parents and daughter!

22 Feb 2005 - MI collected a sample of winter spawners off Donegal in late January. The correct code for this sample would have been 5-S04A; they are, however, labelled as 4-S04B! Please take note of this change when processing the sample!

21 Jan 2005 - The WESTHER statistics workshop and course was conducted at the Bundesforschungsanstalt für Fischerei in Hamburg, Germany, from 17-21 Jan 2005. Some photos are available here.

22 Dec 2004 - Reproduction success within the WESTHER group: PJS' wife gave birth to a small but vivid daughter! Congratulations from all partners!!

09 Dec 2004 - The 3rd WESTHER meeting was conducted in Palma de Mallorca from 7-9 Dec 2004, to review progress on the different workpackages and to prepare work in the last project year. Minutes, report and photos will be available in the meetings section, all presentations are available here (for WESTHER members only).

08 Dec 2004 - For sample 3-M04A, no guts are available for the parasite WP. It therefore cannot be used to compare across all WPs, and should be processed by all other WPs with a lower priority.

01 Dec 2004 - There are now specimens lists available for subsampling of the large mixed aggregation samples - please make sure you have looked at these files if you are not working up the whole sample! (Each file, excel or word, is less than 20 kB large; for samples 3-M02A, 3-M04A, 4-M01A, and 4-M02A (doc) (xls))

07 Sep 2004 - Finally an updated sampling and sample flow overview is available (and will be updated frequently from now on)! Log on to the data section!

27 Aug 2004 - More planning: The 3rd WESTHER meeting will take place during 06.-10 Dec 2004, either on a southern Island or in southern Ireland. More details will be available soon. A statistics course for WESTHER participants will be conducted by FRS MarLab's Alain Zuur during 17-21 Jan 2005. This meeting will be hosted by the German project partner, BFA Fi Hamburg.

01 Jul 2004 - Half-way point of the project! Sampling in 2004 was so far more successful as in last year, with only one planned site missed out (in the Clyde, because this fish didn't seem to behave properly and spawn when they were supposed to). Analyses of the samples are progressing smoothly.

23 Apr 2004 - Fish numbers 3-J04B-086 and 3-J04B-102 are sprat, not herring, and should be removed from all further processing!

29 Mar 2004 - The European Commission has accepted the group's first interim report!

30 Jan 2004 - It appears that two samples have been mislabelled, one from 2003 and one from 2004. UCC have the Celtic Sea mixed stock sample (3-M04A) labelled as 3-M01A. No sample 3-M01A was taken in 2003. Please ensure that the samples you have from the Celtic Sea mixed stock (taken in July 2003) are correctly labelled as 3-M04A.
It seems that the first sample from 2004 (Donegal) has been labelled both as 4-S04A and 4-S04B for different components of the sample. This sample has been recently taken and everyone should ensure that any of their component parts are correctly labelled as 4-S04A. The B sample will be collected later in 2004 - in October or November.

11 Dec 2003 - The 2nd meeting ended today. It was held again at FRS Marine Laboratory in Aberdeen. Major topics of the meeting were a review of sampling and work-up progress during this first project year, and the fine tuning of sampling in 2004. Sampling during 2003 proved to be more difficult than anticipated: Some sites could not be successfully sampled. See the meetings section for the report and a group photo.

15 May 2003 - The WESTHER website was launched. Any comments are appreciated: please contact Emma Hatfield, FRS Marine Lab Aberdeen, for comments regarding the content, and Christopher Zimmermann, ISH Hamburg, for initial layout and structure. For communication to the whole group, use westher@yahoogroups.com.

25 Apr 2003 - The report of the 1st meeting is now available (in the meetings section). Please note that the numbering of outlier sampling sites has slightly changed. The most up-to-date version is displayed in the sampling section.

11 Apr 2003 - first year's sampling of the outlier site X01 (Western Baltic Spring Spawners from the spawning grounds in the Ruegen area) was successfully conducted. For more information, contact partner 3.

31 Mar 2003 - The German FRS "Walther Herwig III" returned from a WESTHER sampling cruise to the west of Scotland. Sampling for juveniles on Stanton Bank was successful (site J07). However, no ripe-and-runing herring could be found on the other two sites in the North (S08 and S10). Partners involved were No. 3, 1 and 2. A cruise report is available here.

20 Jan 2003 - The first Westher project meeting was held in Aberdeen (Scotland), hosted by the FRS Marine Lab, soon after the project officially started on 01 Jan 2003. The report is available online (see the meetings section).

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