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Research Paper On Pilchards

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European Pilchard Sizes/Shapes/Description
The European pilchard is a small, oily, smoothly rounded, silvery fish, related to herrings.
A pilchard is a fish of the herring family that travels in schools along the coasts of Europe. It has flanks that are silver with a darker colored back and fins that are small with relatively large & triangular dorsal fins. This species is bilateral because if we were to cut it in half the two halves would be fairly similar. Pilchards are of great commercial importance as a food fish in many parts of the world. European Pilchards’ average length is around 15-20 cm and the tail itself is deeply forked with a dark/grey tint, similar to a herring. A herring is a silvery fish that’s mostly abundant in coastal waters and is of great commercial importance.

Habitat
Although it is a marine animal it mostly settles in Freshwater. A marine animal is any animal that lives in salt water or derives its food from saltwater environments. Freshwater is anything found in of fresh water; not the sea. The most common places to find European Pilchards are throughout Europe …show more content…

Sexual reproduction is when sperm fertilizes a female’s ovum, different steps occur afterwards. An ovum is the female reproductive cell. The egg cell is typically not capable of movement, and is much larger than the motile sperm cells. The common area to reproduce for this species is in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Mating seasons are September-June (Mediterranean Sea ) and June-August ( Black Sea ). Eggs can be carried for different amounts of time, the max amount of time recorded was two months. The male will fertilize the female’s ovum and both parents will then leave. Two to three days later the eggs will hatch in batches of 50,000-60,000 with a diameter of 1.5mm. As they hatch they will automatically migrate Northwards and stay together in a school and travel together until predators or their individual selves decide

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