April 8, 2021 — The Sitka Sound Sac Roe Herring fishery remained open for the 11th day in a row Tuesday (4-6-21)
Seiners hauled in around 900 tons of herring during Monday’s opening, according to a press release from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Estimates are not yet available for today’s/Tuesday’s opener. To date, the commercial fleet has harvested around 14,700-tons of herring, cumulatively.
December 19, 2018 — A tribal government is filing suit against the State of Alaska, alleging mismanagement of the Sitka sac roe herring fishery. The Sitka Tribe of Alaska has retained a major Anchorage law firm that specializes in tribal advocacy and subsistence issues. KCAW’s Katherine Rose reports on the build-up to this moment over the future of Sitka’s sac roe herring fishery.
For 20 years, tribal leaders have been worried about the health of Sitka’s herring. The silvery fish return every spring to spawn and are pursued by commercial fisherman, subsistence harvesters, and marine mammals alike. As a forage fish, they’re a cornerstone of the ecosystem.
Herring rock is blessed with water to mark this seasonal moment.
Audio: “This is spring. We are getting ready for our season. This is our time for work. Gunalchéesh.”
Jessie Johnnie told the story of herring rock to the Board of Fish in 1997 — one of a young Tlingit woman sitting on the rock and lowering her hair into the ocean for the herring to lay their eggs. “All the herring would come to the rock and swim around,” she said, “and she would sing lullabies to them.”
Herring have cultural, ecological, and economic significance for Sitka. But the message to the Board of Fish back then was that the herring weren’t spawning the same way in the same places, and subsistence harvesters were struggling to gather enough roe.
Herman Kitka, testifying at that 1997 meeting, feared for the worst. “If nothing is done,” he said, “we will lose the herring stock that is left in Sitka Sound.”
In 2018, his son Harvey Kitka went before the Board of Fish to say the same thing: Act now, or potentially lose our herring. Sitka Tribe proposed capping the commercial harvest of herring at 10-percent. But the Board took no action, maintaining a formula that calculates a sliding scale of 12- to 20-percent depending on the size of the biomass.
December 11, 2018 — Despite a poor season last spring, the forecast for the 2019 Sitka Sound Sac Roe Herring Fishery is up. Biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish & Game expect a spawning biomass of just over 64,000 tons of herring in Sitka Sound next March, about 9,000 tons greater than was forecast for this year.
That means the state will allow more herring to be taken next year.
In light of this news, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska announced they would take “drastic action” to protect the herring population from their fear of overfishing.
In a press release published Thursday, Dec. 6, Tribal Council Chairman KathyHope Erickson expressed disappointment at the increased harvest levels “despite the fact that the herring, and the future of all fish and other animals that rely on herring as a forage fish, are in a dire situation.”
Sitka Tribe of Alaska did not specify what their action would be or provide additional comment to KCAW.
Fish & Game assistant area management biologist Aaron Dupuis said department dive surveys turned up far more spawn than first thought. Aerial surveys measured only 33 miles of spawn along the shoreline — about half of the average year. But there was an upside.
“The spawn that we got, the eggs were quite a bit more dense than what we’ve seen in previous years,” Dupis said. “So, while the total mileage was down — and that’s kind of the visible thing that everybody can see is the mileage — the density of the eggs was higher, and the total area offshore, especially on Kruzof Island, was higher than normal.”
February 15, 2018 — Despite three days of impassioned testimony before the Board of Fisheries in January, not much has changed for the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery, which will ramp up in about a month.
Local subsistence harvesters won an increase in the size of their exclusive use area, but failed to persuade the board to reduce the commercial catch.
Fishermen and processors from Petersburg joined with other commercial interests to remind the board of the economic importance of the annual springtime export.
Commercial fishing representatives at January’s meeting testified in oral and written comments about the economic importance of the annual fishery in Sitka Sound.
Icicle Seafoods processes some of the catch at its Petersburg plant and the company’s John Woodruff talked about the impact to the Petersburg economy.
“Last year, we spent roughly $450,000 just on Sitka herring labor,” Woodruff said. “Most of this stays in Petersburg and it comes at a time when there’s not much other economic activity in town and a half-million bucks might not seem like much but at that time of year for a town like Petersburg, I think it’s impactive.”
Read and listen to the full story at KTOO