Thou Shall Have a Fishy

Herring was eaten almost every day by folk along the North Sea coastline, fresh when in season and salted the rest of the year. For centuries they lined the streets with silver, providing nutrition and wealth for many coastal towns.

The Herring Packer’s Oath
You shall make oath that you will well and truly execute your office of a packer of herring within the town of Southwold and mind the laying of all herrings and that they shall be merchantable and that the vessels or casks shall be full and equally packed in every part. So help you God.

Herring are a huge biomass convertor and basically convert zooplankton to flesh. However it hasn’t always been plain sailing in the fishing industry with both North Sea and Bering Sea stocks experience collapse in the 1970s. The North Sea suffered a total collapse and entire fishery closure by 1978, stocks returned, however by the mid-1990s overfishing caused another collapse. Strict management measures were introduced to combat this and by 2003 stock once again recovered. This however is not considered as a 100% recovery as is relative to the stock number once available.

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