Atlantic herring
| Atlantic herring | ||||||||||||
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Atlantic herring ( Clupea harengus ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Clupea harengus | ||||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1758 |
The Atlantic herring ( Clupea harengus ) is one of the most common fish in the world, one of the most important food fish and belongs to the genus of the real herrings . It has been caught in its spawning grounds since time immemorial . Many cities were established near the spawning grounds and catchment areas. The Atlantic herring was one of the most important trading goods for the Hanseatic League . Until well into the 20th century, the Atlantic herring was so common that it was considered “poor people's food”. Today stocks have decreased significantly due to heavy fishing and ecological problems in the Baltic Sea .
distribution and habitat
The species has a wide distribution area in the North Atlantic , which extends from the Bay of Biscay north over the Baltic Sea to Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard . In a westerly direction, it extends over Iceland and southwestern Greenland to the coasts of South Carolina . The Atlantic herring lives at depths of up to around 360 meters, both pelagically in open water and in coastal areas.
features
The slim and laterally flattened fish can reach a length of about 45 centimeters and a weight of about one kilogram, but mostly it remains smaller. The large, slightly upper mouth ends in front of the rear edge of the eyes, which are equipped with a transparent fat eyelid . The back is a steel blue, dark gray or greenish color, while the sides and belly are colored silvery. The pelvic fins and anal fin are whitish transparent. The base and top of the pectoral fins are dark in color. The short dorsal and the deeply forked caudal fin appear completely dark in color. In contrast to the sprat ( Sprattus sprattus ), which is quite similar in habit , the attachment of the pelvic fins is behind the front edge of the dorsal fin and the scales on the belly are rounded and not keeled. Furthermore, the herring differs from other members of its family by an oval collection of small teeth on the ploughshare (vomer). A lateral line is missing, only the head canal system is found: an organ consisting of 4 ossified tubes, pressure-sensitive cells , which enables orientation towards food. The herring carries more than 60 of its relatively large and loosely-fitting scales in a central longitudinal row. In terms of physique, it largely corresponds to that of the Pacific herring .
- Dorsal 17-21
- Anal 14-20
- Pectorals 15-19
- Ventral 7-10
Way of life
The Atlantic herring lives in schools, some of which are very densely populated. The fish initially feeds on phytoplankton (algae) and later on zooplankton such as small crustaceans , pelagic snails and fish larvae, which it hunts on sight and filters out of the water with the help of its gill trap. The epibranchial organ is reduced. If the plankton density is appropriate, it will move through the water with its mouth and gill openings wide open and thus display the food. This “ram feeding” is only briefly interrupted by swallowing movements. During the day it is mainly in the deeper water layers, while at night it follows its food as it migrates vertically to the surface.
Studies of the stomach contents of adult herrings have shown that the animals eat fish instead of plankton in autumn. It was not previously known that herring also feed on fish.
The Atlantic herring is able to generate noises and also to perceive them itself. Thanks to a connection from the swim bladder to the middle ear, he hears well - but not ultrasound, as toothed whales use to locate them. The noises are primarily generated at night and apparently by expelling gas from a swim bladder porus in front of the anus opening. The purpose of this behavior is still unclear; but since the noise production increases with the size of the swarm, it can also be interpreted as communication.
Reproduction
The timing of the reproductive phase varies greatly depending on the population. The mating of the Atlantic herring takes place near the coast at a depth of between 40 and 70 meters, mostly in the transition layer between coastal and the more salty deep water. The females give up around 20,000 to 50,000, in large specimens exceptionally up to 200,000 of the 1.2 to 1.5 millimeter eggs. The males fertilize in open water. The parent animals do not care for the brood. The fertilized eggs are sticky and sink to the bottom, where they stick to stones, plants and each other. At a water temperature of 9 degrees Celsius, the larvae hatch after two weeks, higher temperatures shorten the maturation period. The larvae, between 7 and 9 millimeters in size, rise to the surface, orienting themselves towards the light. After about a week they have used up their yolk sac and begin to feed on very small plankton algae and the larvae of crustaceans. With a total length of 15 to 17 millimeters, the larvae develop their dorsal fin. Anal and pelvic fins and the notch in the caudal fin appear at about three centimeters in length. From about four centimeters in height, the scales are formed and the offspring begin to look like their parents. The fry reach sexual maturity after three to seven years. The Atlantic herring can reach an age of over 20 years.
Role in the ecosystem
The Atlantic herring is an important source of food for a very large number of species, in addition to humans, for example, for a number of cod-like , tuna , mackerel , seals and whales .
Economic and political effects of herring fishing in Europe
The herring catch in the Baltic Sea is inextricably linked with the rise of the Hanseatic League as a regional economic power. The herring was very popular in the Middle Ages as a protein-rich food and as a fasting food, and because it was soaked in salt or brine (with salt from Lüneburg ), it had the advantage of being easy to transport and store. Lent periods were very extensive in the Middle Ages and comprised up to a third of the year.
The salt herring production also led to the construction of the Old Salt Road and the Stecknitz Canal between the Elbe and Trave , one of the first canal projects of modern times in Central Europe , for the transport of the Lüneburg salt via Lübeck to Scania . The Hanseatic processing sites there, Skanör and Falsterbo , became large cities with up to 20,000 people during the season in August and September. Stored in barrels made of Mecklenburg and Pomeranian wood, one-fifth filled with salt , certified with the branded seal of the city of Lübeck, the herring tons were traded as far as Nuremberg and Regensburg .
From around 1500 the herring shoals in the Baltic Sea steadily decreased until they were almost completely absent in the middle of the 16th century. With the increasing economic importance of the North Sea herring from the end of the 15th century, the rise of the Dutch States General and the decline of the Hanseatic League began.
Massive overfishing in the North Atlantic , including the herring stocks, led between 1958 and 1975 to the so-called cod wars with serious political conflicts between Iceland and other European countries. Iceland then gradually expanded its zone of influence in the North Atlantic to the 200 nautical mile zone, thereby also changing international law of the sea and international law . Since then, however, international fishing agreements have meant that herring (in contrast to cod, for example ) is not threatened in its Atlantic stocks.
Usage and preparations
As a fatty food fish, the herring is one of the most important food fish in the world because of its nutritional value with a high protein content , a favorable fatty acid composition and the content of iodine and selenium . Depending on the time of catch, the nutritional status of the herring and the annual reproductive phase have an impact on the available meat quality.
A distinction can be made between the raw materials:
- Matjes herring, fat herring
- In the spring the fish begins to build up new fat reserves. The roe or sperm milk are not yet developed. In return, the flavors of the herring accumulate in the fat base. With the best nutrition, matjes herring, regardless of its size, has a fat content of around 18% when gutted or around 14% as fillet. Only the matjes herring are suitable for processing into so-called matjes brine fillets. The whole matjes herring, also known as green herring, has a higher quality than the herring in its later seasonally development phases.
- Full pegs
- They now already contain the milk or the roe. However, some of the flavors have receded the fat deposits. The whole herring, for example, is traditionally used as a smoked kipper .
- Hollow pegs, Ihlen, bulkheads
- The fish has spawned, the meat is leaner and drier. It is therefore more suitable for marinades such as rollmops , Bismarck herring or fish salads .
After pre-sorting, the herring is usually frozen as a whole on the fishing ships for preservation and in this form is sent to wholesalers and further processing. The food industry offers herring, which has already been filleted, in a wide variety of preparations, ready-to-serve, in a can or in a glass. One of the best-known preserves of this fish is probably the herring in tomato sauce.
However, most of the methods of preparation and preservation go back to the long traditions and customs in the countries of herring fishing:
- fried herring (see also fried green herring or herring miller-style )
- Herring in sour-sweet marinade inserted
- Smoked herring ( kipper , smoked pug)
- marinated herring
- rollmops
- Bismarck herring , named after Otto von Bismarck
- Salted herring , an important commodity during the Hanseatic era
- Matjes
- Green herring (also green herring )
- Surstromming
- Herring salad
- Herring tip
literature
- Andreas Vilcinskas: Fish: Central European freshwater species and marine fish of the North and Baltic Seas. BLV Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-405-15848-6 , p. 60.
- Bent J. Muus, Jørgen G. Nielsen; Preben Dahlström, Bente Olesen Nyström (illustrations): The marine fish of Europe. In the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic. (Original title: Havfisk og fiskeri i Nordvesteuropa. 1998, translated by Matthias Stehmann), Franckh-Kosmos, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-440-07804-3 , p. 87 ff.
- Ernst Schubert: Everyday life in the Middle Ages: natural living environment and human interaction. Primus, Darmstadt 2002, ISBN 3-89678-424-2 .
- Manfred Klinkhardt: The herring. Clupea harengus. (= Die Neue Brehm-Bücherei . Volume 199). Westarp-Wiss., Magdeburg / Spektrum, Akad. Verlag, Heidelberg / Berlin / Oxford 1996, ISBN 978-3-89432-498-8 , p. 230.
Web links
- Animal Diversity Web to the Atlantic herring (English)
- Atlantic herring on Fishbase.org (English)
- Clupea harengus inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: Herdson, D. & Priede, I., 2009. Retrieved December 2, 2013.
Individual evidence
- ↑ to fishBase
- ↑ Hering at the Leibniz Institute for Marine Sciences ( Memento from January 18, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on August 26, 2009)
- ↑ Young researcher elicits secrets from Hering. Focus, May 3, 2017, accessed May 4, 2017 .
- ↑ D. Mann, A. Popper and B. Wilson (2005): Biol Lett. 2005 (June 22) 1 (2): pp. 158-161
- ↑ Ben Wilson, Robert S. Batty and Lawrence M. Dill: "Pacific and Atlantic Herring Produce Burst Pulse Sounds", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B - Biological Sciences, Biology Letters Supplement 3 , vol. 271, 2004, pp. 95-97, doi : 10.1098 / rsbl.2003.0107 (including link to audio file), ISSN 1471-2954 .
- ↑ according to Animal Diversity Web
- ↑ after Muus and Nielsen
- ^ Johann Jakob Sell: About the strong herring catch on Pomerania and Rügen coasts in the 12th and 14th centuries . Translated from the Latin by D. EH Zober . Stralsund 1831, 26 pages, online
- ↑ Ernst Schubert: Eating and drinking in the Middle Ages . Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2nd edition 2010, pp. 136 ff., ISBN 978-3-89678-702-6 .
- ↑ Fatty acid patterns of freshwater and saltwater fish . German Nutrition Society V. Retrieved May 28, 2012.
- ↑ Heinz Klinger: The young cook . Specialized book publisher Dr. Pfanneberg & Co., Giessen 19th edition 1980: pp. 50-51