Coastwide Analysis of Pacific Herring Population Structure

Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) are distributed across coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest; however, different countries have very different harvest and management policies. In Washington State, current management strategies emphasize conservation and rebuilding of herring stocks. In contrast, the relatively larger biomass of herring in Canadian waters supports both commercial and subsistence fisheries, and management efforts are primarily focused on user conflicts and allocation issues. Another contrast between the two countries concerns the status of individual spawning aggregates, which are managed as separate stocks in Washington, but as part of larger stock complexes in Canada, despite consistent claims of First Nations of the existence and depletion of local, non-migratory stocks. A coast-wide analysis of population structure informed by traditional ecological knowledge is important to resolve isolated herring stocks and predict the effect of management measures. To address this issue, we sampled twelve populations of herring from Washington State and British Columbia.  We tested for genetic differentiation among temporally isolated herring populations and discovered high-resolution DNA markers using next-generation sequencing. These markers will be used in future analyses of mixed fisheries and ancient population structure.