Workpackages

The research within the project is divided in 7 different workpackages. Click on the WP-number in the Table below to read more detailled information.

We have subdivided the workpackages into 7 working methods and a series of workshops (A-D). Workpackage 01 consists of the design and co-ordination of the sampling programme and sample collection, enabling us to obtain adult and juvenile herring from spawning, nursery, feeding and overwintering grounds. The spawning herring will provide the reference collection against which juveniles and non-spawning adults will be compared by the various methods. Workpackage 02 comprises 3 sub-workpackages for morphometric and meristic analyses on whole fish (truss system measurements), otolith shape (fourier coefficients) and counts of pyloric caeca (meristic analysis) to explore discrimination of intra-specific groups. Workpackage 03 involves analysis of parasites to provide data on prevalence, intensity, abundance and frequency distributions of tag parasites, and of the genetic characterisation of the selected tag parasites. Workpackage 04 is the genetic analysis of population structure through the examination of microsatellite polymorphism. Workpackage 05 is the analysis of otolith microstructure to determine to which temporal spawning group individuals belong. Workpackage 06 is a study of the microchemistry of the otolith core to determine if herring from different spawning grounds have a distinctive chemical signature in their otoliths. Within 06 is a sub-workpackage where we will validate the use of the otolith cores from adult herring caught on spawning grounds to ensure that they represent the otolith chemical signature of larval herring hatched on the same grounds. Workpackage 07 draws all the methods together in a multivariate analysis to enable prediction of group membership from the mix of data variables. This will provide a sound basis for understanding the population structure of herring in western European waters, with a view to the provision of guidelines for the conservation and management of biodiversity of the herring stock complex. In addition to these 7 work packages there will be a series of co-ordination and intercalibration workshops. (A) An initial co-ordination workshop attended by all participants where issues related to sampling (vessel time and timing, targeted regions and aggregations, methodology), etc. will be discussed. (B) There will be annual co-ordination meetings. (C) A meeting to co-ordinate the multivariate statistical analyses and (D) A final presentation at the ICES HAWG meeting..

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