Herring

Herring are various species of forage fish belonging to the order Clupeiformes that often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, particularly in the temperate North Atlantic and North Pacific, as well as the Baltic Sea and the coasts of South America. Three species of the genus Clupea make up about 90 percent of all herring caught in fisheries, with the Atlantic herring alone accounting for more than half of the total catch, and further herring species live in the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Herring played an important role in the history of marine fisheries in Europe, and the study of herring stocks was fundamental to the development of fisheries science in the early twentieth century; these oily fish have a long history as an important food fish, commonly prepared salted, smoked or pickled, and in the United Kingdom they were historically called silver darlings in recognition of their cultural and economic importance to fishing communities.