Atlantic Herring

• It eats copepods, krill and fish larvae.
• It forms large shoals in coastal and continental-shelf waters on both sides of the North Atlantic.
• Its eggs, laid in thick layers on the sea floor, can suffer heavy mortality from lack of oxygen in the deeper layers.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - bony skeleton (fish)

Habitat and environment

Coastal and continental-shelf waters on both sides of the North Atlantic, forming large shoals

Birth weight

~6 mm long at hatching

Size at birth

6 mm long on hatching, the yolk sac absorbed by around 10 mm

Sexual maturity

2-9 years depending on the population (most commonly 3-5 years)

Gestation / incubation

7-10 days of egg development

Litter / clutch size

20,000 to 200,000 eggs per female, laid as an adhesive layer on the sea floor

Sources consulted: Animal Diversity Web; Animalia.bio; ScienceDirect (fecundity study); Britannica; FishBase; Perennia Nova Scotia; AnAge (genomics.senescence.info); Grokipedia (Atlantic herring)