This is Shark *Bait* Week. It’s a bit of a twist on last year’s Shark Stamp Week.
I’m sharing some information about shark prey animals that have appeared on stamps from around the world. And sharing stamps, too, of course.
This is about herring.
There are over 200 species of fishes called herrings, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae. Three, the Atlantic herring, the Pacific herring, and the Baltic herring make up about 90% of all herring commercially fished.
This stamp comes from the Federal Republic of Germany, or west Germany. It is a semipostal stamp, with a surcharge going to youth programs.
This stamp was issued in the saltwater fish series.
It was issued on August 4, 2016, and has a Scott number of B1119.
It was designed by Werner Hans Schmidt, and printed by Bundesdrukerei using offset lithography. The perforation is 13¾. And it has ordinary gum. The paper is fluorescent.
The stamp has a face value of 70 Euro cents for postage, and a 30 cent semipostal charge.
Herring are pelagic fish, which means they live up in the water column, not near the bottom.
Herring often move in large schools around shallow banks, and near the coast. They are regularly found in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans, including the Baltic Sea.
This stamp hails from Estonia, and is part of a series featuring the national fish, herring.
This commemorative was issued on February 23, 2017, and was designed by Indrek Ilves.
It has a perforation of 13, and 50,000 were printed by offset lithography.
The stamp has a face value of 0.65 Euros.
Herrings are silvery-colored fish, with a single dorsal fin along the back. With so many species, their size of course varies from about 6 to 18 inches (14-46 cm), and up to about 1.5 lbs (700 g).
Herrings eat copepods, krill, and other drifting animals and plants. They are mainly filter feeders, swimming along with their mouths open and taking in anything that comes along. Sometimes they will notice and lunge for larger floating prey.
Herrings are also forage fish. Forage fishes are those that occur in large numbers, and are an important food for larger predators.
Those predators include seabirds, marine mammals such as dolphins, porpoises, whales, seals, and sea lions, and fish such as sharks, billfish, tuna, salmon, striped bass, cod, and halibut.
Coming from Iceland this herring stamp has a Scott number of 222, and there are variants.
The stamps were printed by recess printing, and it was issued on March 6, 1945 as a definitive with a perforation of 14. Before 1953 it had a print run of one million.
The face value is 10 Icelandic eyrir.
Adult herring are caught by humans for their meat and eggs, and they are often used as baitfish to catch larger sea creatures.
The herring industry is essentially irreplacable in the economies of several countries around the world, and it is considered the most economically important fish in the world.
I hope you enjoyed this!
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