The House special committee on fisheries listens to the reasons of falling stocks of herring direct from the common people. Kake elder Clarence Jackson says that when he was young, the seas near Sitka boiled with herring. He also told that the herring have disappeared in my lifetime. Jackson and others told the lawmakers they believe Southeast’s Pacific herring stocks are in trouble from past overfishing and present predation. And they don’t believe the state is doing enough to help them recover.
It is fact that herring is an important element of Alaska Native subsistence. It’s a bellwether species and a foundation of the ecosystem on which many other species depend. Thomas Thornton, an anthropologist at Oxford University, explained that herring stocks were overfished in the first part of the 20th century. Scientist Vince Patrick from the Prince William Sound Science Center compared herring management to salmon.
Evelyn Brown, a herring expert and former Fish and Game biologist, is of view that Fish and Game’s model of herring population is based on guesses – about how many fish there are, how fertile they are and how long they live, for example – that haven’t been validated by field research. The model is the basis for the department’s harvest limits.
Herring sac roe fisherman Chip Treinen told that commercial fishermen shouldn’t be blamed for any declines; they haven’t fished depressed areas such as Lynn Canal for years. He also warned against halting the sac roe fishery, which was worth about $18 million in ex-vessel value last year for 50 permit holders. The department has cut back in the past on herring programs, which is now about 4 percent of the $18 million spent on commercial fisheries, including out-of-state sources.
