Annual monitoring of Pacific herring spawning on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk in May 2024
13 May 2024

Annual monitoring of Pacific herring spawning on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk in May 2024

Specialists from the Magadan branch of the All-Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO) have begun preparatory work for annual studies of the spawning migrations of Pacific herring, delineating the boundaries of its spawning grounds and spawning conditions this year.
 
Observations of spawning herring will be carried out in the area of the sea coast and at the model site - the Olskaya Lagoon. In the first ten days of May 2024, the water area of the Olskaya Lagoon was still covered with ice; spawning approaches of Pacific herring to the coast of the Magadan region are expected no earlier than mid-May, as the ice melts and the water warms up. It is planned that a scientific group consisting of three employees of the branch Abaeva A.D., Fomina E.A. and Burlaka F.A. will conduct research on spawning herring until the end of May.
 
Research will also continue using unmanned aerial systems (UAS), and the area of herring spawning grounds will be delineated and assessed. The degree of commoning of substrates will be assessed and materials will be collected on the biological characteristics of spawning herring. The results obtained will make it possible to estimate the parameters of herring spawning in the current year, compare them with data from previous years and predict the size of future generations of Pacific herring.
 
VNIRO press service