PWS Herring Research and Monitoring Sonia Batten, Mary Anne Bishop, - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

PWS Herring Research and Monitoring

Sponsored by the EVOS Trustee Council

Sonia Batten, Mary Anne Bishop, Rob Bochenek, Kevin Boswell, Trevor Branch, Mike Collins, Kristen Gorman, Ron Heintz, Paul Hershberger, Steve Moffitt, Scott Pegau, Fletcher Sewall, Dick Thorne, Johanna Vollenweider, Sharon Wilde, Cordova District Fishermen United

Why a herring program?

Design

• Began in 2012 – 20 yr study
• Starting 2nd five years
• Focused in Prince William Sound
• Mix of monitoring and process studies

Goal and Objectives

• Improve predictive models of herring stocks

through observations and research

• Expand and test the herring stock assessment

model used in Prince William Sound

• Provide inputs to the stock assessment model
• Examine the connection between herring

condition or recruitment to physical and biological oceanographic factors

• Develop new approaches to monitoring

First Five Year Projects

• Herring intensive
• Fatty acid analysis
• Acoustic intensive
• Acoustic validation
• Disease studies
• Herring tagging
• Disease forecasting
• Non lethal sampling
• Coordination
• Outreach
• Disease survey
• Adult biomass surveys
• Juvenile index
• Age 0 condition
• Age-1 aerial survey
• Determine age of first

spawn

• Genetic stock structure
• Population modeling
• Herring Scale analysis
• Data visualization

Current Projects

• Modeling – Trevor Branch - UW
• Aerial and age surveys – Stormy Haught – ADFG
• Acoustic surveys – Pete Rand - PWSSC
• Disease research – Paul Hershberger – USGS
• Reproductive maturity – Kristen Gorman – PWSSC
• Herring Migration – Mary Anne Bishop – PWSSC
• Coordination – Scott Pegau – PWSSC
• Research fellowship – Maya Groner – Disease
• Research fellowship - David McGowan – Recruitment and

environment

Acoustic surveys of Juveniles

• Large variations in estimated biomass

First Year Growth

• Diatom abundance
• Summer water

temperature

• Zooplankton

• Critical size for survival
• Size relates to change in
• Lipid storage
• Growth
• Overwintering feeding
• Size dependent mortality

Tagging

• Demonstrated feasibility
• Led to expansion of efforts

in current program

Genetics

• Genetic similar to

east, different to west

• Kamishak a mix of two

populations

Recruitment

• Anticipated a large recruit

class in 2015

Disease

• Able to detect

VHSV antibodies

• New perspective
• n disease in PWS

Current Projects

• Modeling – Trevor Branch – UW
• PWS crash unusual in magnitude and duration
• Aerial and age surveys – Stormy Haught – ADFG
• A lot of effort, little spawn, fish ages3-5, older fish missing
• Acoustic surveys – Pete Rand – PWSSC
• Initial estimates are slightly more fish than last year
• Disease research – Paul Hershberger – USGS
• Working on determining age structure of fish with antibodies
• Reproductive maturity – Kristen Gorman – PWSSC
• Difficulty of sampling in June/July
• Herring Migration – Mary Anne Bishop – PWSSC
• 58 of 125 fish tagged observed at entrances
• Coordination – Scott Pegau – PWSSC
• Hiring one Postdoc and working on funding for a second

Questions