Herring roe fishery

Conservation groups can "want" all day long, the fishery has been run based on a scientific MSE approach...if the models show there is a harvestable surplus, a fishery takes place. If not, there will be no fishery. As in what happened on WCVI for several years running now. Of course, Liberals could always choose to close the fishery despite science evidence - good example is what happened with the Public Fishery and a MSF chinook opening. More and more we have people playing politics rather than applying logic.
 
"The call is supported by sports fishing advocate Sam Sansalone, owner of Powell River Outdoors, an outdoor specialty store."

When your area is turned into a Big MPA to protect herring and you have nowhere left to fish are you going to take to the media and *****? Clowns like this are going to end the sports fishing industry.

Abo's and Commercial fishermen have it right, Fishing is great out there, There are fish everywhere give us more quota.
 
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Wow, I need a smoke. That was almost as good as sex. Guess we are now back to let's build the best science-based MSE model as possible, and let that determine if there is or is not a harvest....and if there is a harvest, set it at sustainable levels.
It does not seem to be happening. DFO is not doing what is required. This pretty much sums it uo from Times Columnist
In response to a formal information request for research reports regarding the relationship between Pacific herring (that spawn in the Strait of Georgia), chinook salmon and the southern resident killer whales, the federal government responded to Pacific Wild researchers on Sept. 30:



“Please note that the Fisheries Management branch and Science branch of our Pacific region [sic] advised us that they will be providing a Nil response … We have been advised that there is no other research that DFO has done regarding the impacts the commercial herring fishery has on southern resident killer whales.”

First, it’s mind-boggling that industry representatives want to debate the exact magnitude of herring declines — the point is that herring populations are collapsing, potentially to the detriment of chinook salmon and orcas. Adopting a precautionary principle and correcting any population decline is immediately needed.

Second, it is astounding that the federal government, faced with two struggling species, hasn’t even done any research on the impacts of industrial fishing to population numbers and survival rates of chinook and orcas.

The government needs to do its homework, industry needs to take a step back and we need to look for ways to financially assist our fishers in this transitionary period. Both federal and provincial governments are investing millions of dollars in salmon and whale recovery programs, and we believe the first logical step should be to protect their main food supply — Pacific herring.



Ian McAllister is the executive director of Pacific Wild. Bryce Casavant is a former B.C. conservation officer and is currently the conservation policy analyst at Pacific Wild. And to give you some perspective here is what was being done in the early part of the last century. We are going backwards.
“My grandparents were telling me, and my parents were saying, that some of the creeks here were just full of sockeye,” he says. “You could practically walk across the creeks, they were so full of sockeye and other species.”

Gilbert, the Stanford fish biologist, died in 1928. But the years of cutting-edge monitoring in those notebooks had him recommending conservation measures to save the sockeye even then. It didn’t work. And now the dearth of the monitoring he so exactingly put in place draws into question whether it’s even possible to correct a century of declines.

“There were warning signs there almost from the beginning, and we didn’t heed them,” Price says. “That blows me away.”
 
An opinion in today’s Times Colonist

Close herring fishery to restore Salish Sea
The lack of Pacific herring in our marine ecosystems caused by decades of overfishing continuers to have huge negative repercussions on the abundance of our wildlife.
Among other things it explains largely why there are so few birds loons, grebes, ducks etc. along our coast today compared to the past.
If we are serious about restoring the Salish Sea, we need heck of a lot more herring.
We need to rein in the herring fishery here as in other parts of the Pacific coast in Canada and the United States.
We hope to see the First Nations of Vancouver Island take an active role in making this closure happen, as other First Nations have done elsewhere in British Columbia.
Jacques Sitrios
Friends of Victoria Harbour
Migratory Bird Sanctuary
Victoria
 
Since we are now moving into environmental group based science here is something interesting.

https://www.raincoast.org/projects/marine-birds/pacific_herring/

Science is a painstaking and methodical process. Added to this, Pacific herring spawns are relatively short-lived, lasting approximately three weeks each year at any given location. Complicating matters further, you never truly know when or where Pacific herring spawn until the water turns white with milt and the spawning begins. Each year, we impatiently laid in wait on the beaches of Quatsino Sound, located on the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Quatsino Sound hosts a small but still relatively predictable herring spawn that takes place against a terrestrial backdrop of mainly old-growth forests.

Using remote cameras positioned on beaches, we determined that black bears responded positively to herring eggs, with bears being more frequent at larger spawn events. By pairing this research with the collection of bear scats, we also found that black bears ate more eggs on beaches that experience larger spawns, with eggs being consumed by bears for over five weeks from single spawn events in Quatsino Sound, British Columbia. Black bears are not the only terrestrial and intertidal species to exploit herring; coastal wolves, songbirds, small mammals and intertidal invertebrates also directly rely on herring.

From both scientific and conservation standpoints, our research opens up entirely novel areas of enquiry. To the best of our knowledge, no scientific exploration of the relationships between Pacific herring and terrestrial ecosystems has ever been previously undertaken. Similarly, our knowledge of the ecological consequences of Pacific herring spawns to intertidal ecosystems are not currently understood in the context of a spatial subsidy. We’re still in the early stage of simply tracing out the ecological relationships – the next step is to understand the ecological consequences of herring spawns and conversely, what the loss of Pacific herring means to coastal ecosystems.
 
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Do we really want to go down the ecological health rabbit hole??

https://www.epa.gov/salish-sea/chinook-salmon

Chinook Salmon

Summary
indicator-red-35px_0.png

Declining
Chinook salmon populations are down 60% since the Pacific Salmon Commission began tracking salmon data in 1984.

Sustainable Perspective
First foods ceremonies are one way Coast Salish communities celebrate respect for the earth. In spring, families celebrate the first Chinook salmon caught with First Salmon ceremonies called Thehitem ("looking after the fish.") At the end of the ceremonies the bones of the salmon are returned to the river with a prayer giving thanks to the Creator, Chíchelh Siyá:m, and the salmon people. This is to show that the salmon were well-treated and welcome the following year.

Salmon are an iconic species of the Salish Sea. They play a critical role in supporting and maintaining ecological health, and in the social fabric of First Nations and tribal culture.
 
No outcry from engo's?

Fishery Notice
Category(s):
COMMERCIAL - Invertebrates: Euphausiid
Subject:
FN1174-COMMERCIAL - Invertebrates: Euphausiid - South Coast - Area 15 and 16 - Opens November 15, 2019



Open 18:00 hours November 15, 2019 to 23:59 hours December 31, 2019 to
commercial fishing for Euphausiids, by plankton trawl gear, in the following
Subareas:

Quota Management area 16B:

15-1 to 15-3, 16-18 and portion of 16-11 westerly of a line from Ahistrom Pt.
light 175 degrees true to a point on the shoreline of Nelson Island.

Variation Order No. 2019-633


Note: Closures will be implemented before December 31, 2019 if quotas are
achieved.

Refer to 2018/2022 Euphausiid Integrated Fishery Management Plan and the
2018/2022 Commercial Harvest Plan, for the detailed fishing plan, closed area
descriptions, and contact numbers for further informa¬tion.
 
No outcry from engo's?

Fishery Notice
Category(s):
COMMERCIAL - Invertebrates: Euphausiid
Subject:
FN1174-COMMERCIAL - Invertebrates: Euphausiid - South Coast - Area 15 and 16 - Opens November 15, 2019



Open 18:00 hours November 15, 2019 to 23:59 hours December 31, 2019 to
commercial fishing for Euphausiids, by plankton trawl gear, in the following
Subareas:

Quota Management area 16B:

15-1 to 15-3, 16-18 and portion of 16-11 westerly of a line from Ahistrom Pt.
light 175 degrees true to a point on the shoreline of Nelson Island.

Variation Order No. 2019-633


Note: Closures will be implemented before December 31, 2019 if quotas are
achieved.

Refer to 2018/2022 Euphausiid Integrated Fishery Management Plan and the
2018/2022 Commercial Harvest Plan, for the detailed fishing plan, closed area
descriptions, and contact numbers for further informa¬tion.

is it safe to say we all know the difference between a Herring Harvest and a Euphausiid fishery
 
Euphausiid fisheries, don't get me started. This is one area that appears not to be well studied when it comes to defining scientifically if there is, or is not, an actual harvestable surplus within the ecosystem. Krill as many of us commonly call them, are a critically important prey species for many salmon. With changes within the SoG ecosystem and the almost total disappearance of Eulachon which was a major prey source for many salmon species underscores need to better understand the prey requirements before we determine harvest. Herring are playing an ever increasing role in filling the prey requirements of salmon and we absolutely MUST get the MSE ecosystem model runs updated to account for prey requirements of salmon.

This is very critical given the shift in available prey for salmon, and Euphausiids are also critically important for all salmon species, but more so for Sockeye and Chum which are failing badly. This Euphausiid fishery must be stopped more urgently than the herring fishery, which we at least have some science to guide harvest. As was suggested I'm at a loss as to why the Green ENGO's are not lighting their hair on fire about Euphausiid Fisheries.

Here's a quote worth reading from a 2016 study:

Historical Diets of Forage Fish and Juvenile Pacific Salmon in the Strait of Georgia, 1966–1968
Geoffrey J. Osgood

Laura A. Kennedy

Jessica J. Holden

Eric Hertz

Skip McKinnell

Francis Juanes
First published: 30 November 2016

https://doi.org/10.1080/19425120.2016.1223231

Citations: 4

Increasing sea surface temperature in the strait, for example, has been associated with increased feeding rates among Pacific salmon (Daly and Brodeur 2015), potentially reflecting increased energy demands. But less availability of prey items high in energy content (such as euphausiids, copepods, and amphipods), coupled with a rise in gelatinous zooplankton (Davis et al. 1998; Li et al. 2013), compounds the pressures on Pacific salmon to meet their energy demands. A comparison of contemporary diets with those in the historical data could be useful for discerning how these changes have influenced fish foraging. Another major change in the Strait of Georgia that could have influenced the diets of these fish is the decline of the Fraser River population of Eulachon. Eulachon were the most abundant fish species caught in this study and the most abundant fish prey found in predator stomachs. The loss of such a high‐quality prey item could have had consequences for the trophic interactions of the remaining predator species. We postulate that the larger role of Pacific Herring in contemporary Pacific salmon diets is a response to the declines in Eulachon availability.

Link to Study =
https://afspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1080/19425120.2016.1223231
 
Euphausiid fisheries, don't get me started. This is one area that appears not to be well studied when it comes to defining scientifically if there is, or is not, an actual harvestable surplus within the ecosystem. Krill as many of us commonly call them, are a critically important prey species for many salmon. With changes within the SoG ecosystem and the almost total disappearance of Eulachon which was a major prey source for many salmon species underscores need to better understand the prey requirements before we determine harvest. Herring are playing an ever increasing role in filling the prey requirements of salmon and we absolutely MUST get the MSE ecosystem model runs updated to account for prey requirements of salmon.

This is very critical given the shift in available prey for salmon, and Euphausiids are also critically important for all salmon species, but more so for Sockeye and Chum which are failing badly. This Euphausiid fishery must be stopped more urgently than the herring fishery, which we at least have some science to guide harvest. As was suggested I'm at a loss as to why the Green ENGO's are not lighting their hair on fire about Euphausiid Fisheries.

Here's a quote worth reading from a 2016 study:

Historical Diets of Forage Fish and Juvenile Pacific Salmon in the Strait of Georgia, 1966–1968
Geoffrey J. Osgood

Laura A. Kennedy

Jessica J. Holden

Eric Hertz

Skip McKinnell

Francis Juanes
First published: 30 November 2016

https://doi.org/10.1080/19425120.2016.1223231

Citations: 4

Increasing sea surface temperature in the strait, for example, has been associated with increased feeding rates among Pacific salmon (Daly and Brodeur 2015), potentially reflecting increased energy demands. But less availability of prey items high in energy content (such as euphausiids, copepods, and amphipods), coupled with a rise in gelatinous zooplankton (Davis et al. 1998; Li et al. 2013), compounds the pressures on Pacific salmon to meet their energy demands. A comparison of contemporary diets with those in the historical data could be useful for discerning how these changes have influenced fish foraging. Another major change in the Strait of Georgia that could have influenced the diets of these fish is the decline of the Fraser River population of Eulachon. Eulachon were the most abundant fish species caught in this study and the most abundant fish prey found in predator stomachs. The loss of such a high‐quality prey item could have had consequences for the trophic interactions of the remaining predator species. We postulate that the larger role of Pacific Herring in contemporary Pacific salmon diets is a response to the declines in Eulachon availability.

Link to Study =
https://afspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1080/19425120.2016.1223231

Harvesting Euphausiid (Krill) is a very worthwhile subject to be debated and I think it should be done so under it's own Thread!!
 
herring Dec. 2019.jpg
Conservancy Society Hornby Island
Dec. 4, 2019
"A call to action for the southern Strait of Georgia...
The [herring] population is predicted to decline further in 2020 to a ten-year low.
Herring mismanagement has heavy consequences for our coastal communities and ecosystems.
Both traditional knowledge and recent data have shown that the current management system is not working, and during this period of struggle for many inhabitants of our coast, we cannot risk further declines for temporary corporate gains."
Please sign our petition.
https://www.change.org/p/bernadette...-canada-say-no-to-pacific-herring-roe-fishery
 
Signed, sealed and delivered
109,100 have signed
 
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