This article is about the masago. Capelin populations in the Barents Sea and around Iceland perform extensive seasonal migrations. Icelandic capelin move inshore in large schools to spawn and migrate in spring and summer to feed in the plankton-rich oceanic area between Iceland, Greenland, and Jan Mayen.
As an r-selected species, capelin have a high reproductive potential and an intrinsic population growth rate. They reproduce by spawning and their main spawning season occurs in spring but can extend into the summer. Capelin is an important forage fish, and is essential as the key food of the Atlantic cod. The northeast Atlantic cod and capelin fisheries, therefore, are managed by a multispecies approach developed by the main resource owners Norway and Russia. In some years with large quantities of Atlantic herring in the Barents Sea, capelin seem to be heavily affected. Probably both food competition and herring feeding on capelin larvae lead to collapses in the capelin stock.
In some years, though good recruitment of capelin despite a high herring biomass suggests that herring are only one factor influencing capelin dynamics. Commercially, capelin is used for fish meal and oil industry products, but is also appreciated as food. The flesh is agreeable in flavor, resembling herring. Modelling and simulations of the migration of pelagic fish”. Polar Life Canada: Capelin, Mallotus villosus. Beach-Spawning Fishes: Reproduction in an Endangered Ecosystem.