Hello Pacific Herring Aficionados of the Salish Sea,

Fishing Notice 0114, issued 12 Feb 2025 closed the Food and Bait Fishery for the season.  The reported harvest is 2017 short tons. A separate email to David Ellis reported that the harvest was in Northumberland Channel (between Nanaimo and Gabriola) Nanoose and Qualicum.  That’s all the info we have. 

For years we have been asking for finer details, like; how much harvested  where, what size at what age, what average size and age and maybe even what DNA analysis.  Alas, nothing.

The next fishery is the Roe Fishery.  This fishery is called a kill fishery because the fish are all killed before they spawn the next generation.  This fishery strips the female roe out and sends the rest of the females and all of the males to the fish reduction plant for cat and fish farm food.

The economics of the Roe Fishery are very opaque.  The big market was in Japan, but the Japanese herring have recovered and the roe product from Japan is quite superior to the BC and Alaskan roe.  As a consequence the Alaskan Roe Fishery did not open last year.  Alaskan Herring Licenses are structured differently and must be bid on at auction.  Nobody bid on the available quota due to low prices offered by the market.

In the Salish Sea, DFO has already awarded the quota  and so the herring will be harvested in spite of suspected low prices.  Canadian roe harvesters have another market, the ground up carcasses bring a good price to offset the low Roe prices.

Before March 1, the seiners will be out with their depth sounders looking for herring massing in deeper water, ripening for a spawning event on shore.  The areas open are; 17North, Nanaimo to French Creek, and 14, Qualicum to Lazo.

The seiners will report the estimated tonnes of herring on the depth sounder, but that is irrelevant since the harvest has already been awarded and the Roe Fishery will take their harvest irrespective of depth sounder biomass. Last year 3200 tons was taken from Lambert Channel before even a single herring spawned.

Last year, the DFO  Science Data Summary showed no (0.0 tonnes) spawn in Nanaimo, Nanoose and Baynes Sound and very little spawn in Comox, Lazo and Hornby Island.  The bulk of the spawn was at Qualicum Beach and the east coast of Denman.

The Total Allowable Catch this year is a higher number even though the herring biomass of the Salish Sea is clearly trending downwards.  This graph is from DFO Science Data Summary 2024.  This year the TAC is 12,787 tons, an increase of 4,729 tons from last year, even though the trend of biomass is going down.

The Q’ul-lhanumutsun Aquatic Resources Society, formed by the elected councils of six southern Gulf Island First Nations, has closed the southern Gulf Islands to all industrial herring fisheries.  They first noticed their spawning herring disappearing in 2014 and by 2020 all the herring were gone and they have still not returned.

What to do about this stupid mess, 

Call me to get involved in the letter writing and phoning campaign.

The next scheduled event is a presentation to the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Region Research Institute March 7 in Qualicum. Save the Date, more details to come shortly.

Jim Shortreed, 250 937 9475