Land & Sea: Tiny but mighty capelin — and why they are so important to the N.L. fishery

Hi everyone, I'm Jane Ady, host of Land and Sea. We're all set to start our brand new season. This weekend's show is all about the most important forage fish in Newfoundland and Labrador, the tiny but mighty capelin. Here's a look at that show. Well what we're seeing is a spawning event here at Bellevue Beach. So Jane, what we see here is a male and female, so I snatched two that were kind of very closely coupled together on the beach. The males, the pectoral fins and the anal fin are a lot larger than they are on the female right at this time and the major feature is the the female looks very smooth and surface like a capelin looks all year round whereas the males have the spawning ridge so you can see here this this is very pronounced on a male body this ridge and that's what allows the males to kind of grab hold to the female when when the spawning is actually happening on the beach it actually allowed the male to kind of hold on to the female as it were and help with depositing the sperm when the female is releasing their eggs. So that's our first show of our new season all about capelin. You'll learn about what kind of research goes into assessing the stock and we'll learn about the commercial capelin fishery too. So tune in Sunday at a new time 11 o'clock on the island and 10 30 in most of Labrador. And if you miss it on Sunday you can always catch it on Monday right after here and now. We'll see you soon.