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Behold! The Mighty Herring!

No, really. For many reasons, it's the biggest fish in BC waters. A special report

By Jude Isabella, 4 Nov 2011, TheTyee.ca

Pacific herring

Pacific herring: silvery key to British Columbia's natural and cultural history.

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"It's all about the herring," an anthropological researcher named Iain McKechnie said to me at a dinner party about a year and a half ago.

I scoffed. Herring?

Like most fish-swilling West Coasties, I was a devotee of salmon, British Columbia's iconic wildlife symbol. I was there every year for the running of the salmon, at whichever spawning stream was handy. I consulted my wallet-sized card and bought the salmon approved by Ocean Wise. I ate salmon grilled, baked, cured and smoked. I was even embarking on a book about the relationship between people and salmon.

Why should I care about the herring, that little silver bulldog of a fish that didn't have the grace to die after spawning? Sure, it had high Omega-3s like salmon, but really! Herring?

Little did I know that I was about to enter the opposing camp, the herring camp. For McKechnie was only the first of a growing crowd of researchers, environmentalists and First Nations activists who wanted me to shut-up, already, about the damn salmon. What was emerging from the scientific record, they said, was a past world much richer, more diverse, and decidedly less salmon-centric than most people suspected -- a world that had something to teach us about living in balance.

McKechnie, of the University of British Columbia, was the first but by no means the most vociferous of herring advocates I was to meet. That distinction belongs to Dana Lepofsky, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University and a powerful engine in the drive to understand the complexity of ancient fisheries. At my last encounter with Lepofsky she was wearing a bright-blue T-shirt that read "I [heart-symbol] Herring" and she brought to her lecture the scrappiness of the herring legions. "My goal, as an activist and lover of herring," she said, "is that we make herring a household word -- that it's as loved up and down the coast as salmon."

Scientifically, Lepofsky's goal is to map the historical -- and pre-historical -- diversity and abundance of stocks other than salmon, using oral histories from First Nations communities and zooarchaeological data as part of the process. To that end, she has assembled a multi-disciplinary team of herring researchers at SFU and other institutions: ecologists, archaeologists, fisheries biologists and representatives of the First Nations. It is called -- touché, salmonistas -- The Herring School. Graduate students associated with The Herring School, as uppity as Lepofsky in their dedication to reassert the place of the little silver fish in the ecosystem, came up with the blue T-shirts.

Bones in the mud

What McKechnie does to advance the herring cause is search for tiny bones in Barkley Sound, off the west coast of Vancouver Island. He uses corers -- plastic tubes -- to extract layers of mud, and augers to haul up shells and fish bones from village sites, some of them 5,000 years old. The corer lets him read layers as deep as seven metres. Across the island from McKechnie, in Comox Harbour, Megan Caldwell, from the University of Alberta, has already learned that the people using fish traps perhaps 2,000 years ago were stalking herring -- not necessarily salmon. And at Burrard Inlet, the fjord that separates the city of Vancouver from the North Shore Mountains, Nova Pierson, a Simon Fraser University graduate student, has found that herring and other small fish were exploited continuously for 3,000 years and were crucial to the well-being of communities. Salmon were prized, the herring students admit, but their portion on ancient plates rose and fell, an indication that people might have been concerned about over-exploiting a resource.

All three students do something a little different: they use at most a two-millimetre mesh to screen fish bones. The commonly used six-millimeter screen is too big to catch the bones of herring.

Herring core samples

SFU researcher Ian McKechnie's core samples containing fish bones that may be from 5,000-year-old villages. Photo: Jude Isabella.

It isn't only salmon-eaters, then, who discriminate against herring: standard methods of research have long jaundiced the scientist's view. The quest for better methods recently led one University of Victoria archaeologist, Quentin Mackie, who works at sites in Haida Gwaii, off B.C.'s northern coast, to try sifting with mosquito nets. "You bring back half the site to the lab," he said. "Not viable."

Using water to wash debris helps in finding small bones, but it's labour-intensive and expensive. And there is always a trade-off: careful perusal of small samples yields otherwise overlooked fragments, but a quick wide overview of an area is valuable too. So refocusing the research lens to include small species is no easy matter.

The over-representation of salmon bones in the archaeological record is only one culprit in skewing our notion of ancient coastal ecosystems. Recent local extinctions of herring populations and the presence of invasive species, like mitten crabs, that damage fish habitats messes with our perceptions of what diversity was in the pre-historic scene along Canada's beaches.

Ghosts of herring past

I caught up with Caldwell in early spring at Gibsons Beach, an hour and half ferry ride across from Comox. The beach is a 15-minute paddle by canoe from the Tla'amin First Nation main reserve and about 130 kilometres north of Vancouver. Armed with an industrial-sized tape measure, a compass, and clipboards, Caldwell and Nyra Chalmer, from SFU, were surveying the beach. A blue heron stalked the water's edge behind them and an eagle twittered from one of the tall trees lining the rocky shoreline. As the tide receded before them, a rock pattern emerged -- a circle and chevron shapes that pooled water. It was a fish trap.

Caldwell and Chalmer were mapping the fish trap, along with other features of the beach that might help tell the story of an ancient people's eating habits. Although other sites in the Tla'amin territory go back more than 7,000 years, the material from Gibson Beach is only a few hundred years old, from just prior to European contact. When the blue heron plucked a fish from the water, though, we were quite sure it wasn't a herring: Tla'amin no longer has a herring fishery.

Caldwell spent countless hours during the winter in a lab at SFU, sifting through dirt -- bags and bags of Gibsons Beach midden samples stored on metal racks -- and using tweezers to pick out herring bones and other faunal remains. (I've watched her at it and wondered whether herring lovers have X-ray vision: I tweeze up a bone the size of a pine needle and, with a glance, Caldwell pronounces, "Cleithrum, probably from a herring. It's part of the pectoral girdle, it sits behind the gills.")

Fish traps

Fish trap on Gibsons Beach, near the Tla'amin First Nation main reserve. Photo: Jude Isabella.

After walking the beach with Caldwell and Chalmer, we get in our cars and drive five minutes to the main village of Tla'amin territory to get another angle on local fishery history. The village is called Teeshoshum, which translates to "Waters White With Herring Spawn," and a generation ago, it still deserved the name.

The front yard of the village is a sandy beach with stone walls that scallop the shore for a kilometre -- sunken fish traps that echo the pre-Colombian-era remains that Caldwell and Chalmers were mapping -- and that still catch the odd fish in season. I found Michelle Washington, land use coordinator for the Sliammon Treaty Society, in Tla'amin's administrative offices.

"When I was a kid, this time of year was alive, this village was alive," she said as she placed a number of studies on the table, one was a land use survey she authored. "Everybody had their smokehouse ready, their herring racks ready, the kids were all down the beach, you know little kids just had ice cream buckets, the bigger kids had bigger buckets, because you could go down into the little pond in the intertidal zone and scoop up hundreds of herring in one scoop and run it to your house. That's not that long ago: 1984 was the last year I remember that happening."

Washington is only 40, young enough that in many families she might have grown up ignorant of Tla'amin traditions, but she was curious about the old ways and spent time with her grandparents as a girl. Over the years she has also interviewed lots of elders. One of the things she learned was the interplay of environment and people: stone traps invited in the herring, precisely when salmon stores were low (early spring) and villages needed an influx of fresh food. Animals and people danced an annual cycle together.

As land use coordinator, Washington is determined to help set the record straight, to show what the ecology of the Tla'amin territory looked like during thousands of years of human occupation. But repeating the story of the Tla'amin herring catch can be painful, especially if it has no effect. Management practices would have to change fast enough to restore the Tla'amin catch in her lifetime.

In the summer, Lepofsky brought Washington along with dozens of scientists and First Nations representatives, to SFU for a Herring School Workshop, and Washington's sadness echoed through the narratives of many of the aboriginal people. Barbara Wilson from Haida Gwaii ended her presentation with an honest comment. "It's very hard," she said just before leaving the microphone stand, "to again step up and give information."

There is an impatience, among scientists and First Nations alike, to restore herring fisheries. They all know that though the stories are readily available, the rest comes slowly: the research and the political haggling and the bureaucratic tinkering and the awakening of the public that could, someday, restore the fisheries.

Still, the stories at the workshop were wonderful -- of the Sitka, Alaska, herring spawn fishery, where Harvey Kitka has for more than 60 years employed traditional methods; of the Heltiusk nation's joyous harvest when the herring spawned and ecosystem exploded with life, which 85-year-old fisherman Edwin Newman recounted in vivid detail; of the Haida glossary that Wilson assembled for the Ee ung, which is what the Haida call herring. They have a word for milt in water --k'aajii -- a word for the movement of herring in water -- skiidguunang -- and a word for each of the four kinds of kelp on which the herring spawn. (Haida Gwaii has sites more than 10,000 years old yielding herring bones that likely were processed by people.)

SFU archaeologist Dana Lepofsky

SFU archaeologist Dana Lepofsky, sleuthing ancient fisheries along BC's coast. Photo: Jude Isabella.

The archaeologists and ecologists hung on the Haida's herring lingo, keen to soak up observances and practices passed on to Wilson and others, from a time before newcomers came from Europe, coastlines crowded up, and the attentive ways of living with fish died out, along with the rich diversity of the waters.

"When you lose a gathering site or a species, you lose all the practices, the songs, and the language that goes along with that cultural activity," Washington told me, as we looked over a map of traditional fishing, hunting, and foraging areas in Tla'amin territory. Tla'amin has a few fluent speakers but a language disappears in fits and spurts. The language of fading traditions dies first, and even a linguistic revival might fail to include language specific to such a lost resource as herring. So the narrative has been interrupted on many levels. It's frustrating for Tla'amin and other indigenous communities.

A few communities still depend on herring. The Yu'pik, for example, on the Bering Sea near Nelson Island, Alaska, have traditionally had plenty of herring and few salmon. But in many areas, commercial and aboriginal fisheries alike have declined.

Everybody's lunch

Nearly 200 true herring species -- of the family Clupeidae -- swim the temperate ocean, but what we commonly call herring are the Atlantic (of which the Baltic herring is a subspecies) and the Pacific. These, and all the true herring, are forage fish, which means they live near the surface and are the main breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a slew of predators. Silvery, with a single dorsal fin and the jutting lower jaw that gives them a bulldog look, herring are also distinguished by having no lateral line -- the organ that, in many fish, senses vibration or movement. They're also known to fart, that is, a herring communicates by blowing air out its anus -- it does this at night with lots of other fish around.

The lifespan of a herring averages 10 years, and some probably live for 20 years or more. Those that migrate may grow as big as a pink salmon. And like salmon, they usually return to their natal waters to spawn.

Herring populated the Pacific Ocean about 3.5 million years ago, colonizing waters from northern Baja California to northern Alaska, and across to Japan and Russia. The most productive North American herring habitats extend from B.C. to southern Alaska, an area that was covered by an ice sheet more than 11,000 years ago. When the glaciers retreated, it is possible that herring were among the first fish to show up, drawn by phytoplankton and zooplankton. It's possible to argue, then, that the pioneering herring lured both salmon and people to our continent.

Commercial herring harvests on the West Coast began a scant 140 years ago. The catch peaked in the early 1960s and collapsed soon after. Here's the way evolutionary biologists explain the collapse:

Overfishing removed most of the older fish from the gene pool, which promoted a "live fast, die young" population. Young, small fish had to reproduce early; older, bigger fish -- the kind that produce more eggs -- did not get to pass on their genes.

The federal government closed the West Coast commercial herring fishery for four years after the collapse, allowing only traditional and bait fisheries. Herring numbers climbed, and in 1972, the government established a roe fishery that remains dominant today. Yet three of the five identified stocks managed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans still have no commercial fishery: Haida Gwaii, the Central Coast, and West Vancouver Island. The two that do, Prince Rupert and the Georgia Strait, are likely not what they once were. And trends in consumption remain a worry. High-end herring roe from B.C., for example, a traditional New Year's gift in Japan, is in less demand by young Japanese who are, well, less traditional.

Reviving the runs

Part of the fervor of the herring researchers is to pinpoint why particular herring runs have dropped and not recovered. Overfishing and shoreline development are obvious culprits. And some decline may be random: small, abundant species that reproduce quickly tend to have populations that yo-yo. Genetic isolation, too, may doom local populations. In the Georgia Strait as a whole, for example, the herring fishery is quite healthy, while the Tla'amin herring population within the Strait has tanked.

Mapping a fish trap

Megan Caldwell from University of Alberta and Nyra Chalmer of SFU mapping a fish trap on Gibsons Beach. Photo: Jude Isabella.

It is hard to assess population diversity in herring, because populations mix before they go off to spawn. Before the development of the automated genetic sequencer in 1986, efforts to distinguish herring stocks focused on reproduction rates, the kinds of parasites hosted, or growth rates -- all imperfect markers because they're affected by environmental conditions. Today, efficient, affordable DNA analysis is yielding useful results.

At the University of Washington, Lorenz Hauser's studies of Puget Sound herring populations has revealed that the severely depleted Cherry Point herring is an isolated, genetically distinct population distinguished by late spawning times in exposed areas. Segregation, and the vulnerability it brings, appears in many cases to arise from distinct spawning times.

Researchers hope that DNA from ancient herring bones will likewise help distinguish regional herring populations and their vulnerabilities. Camilla Speller, a postdoctoral fellow in the archaeology department at the University of Calgary, is on that track, having identified 43 unique DNA sequences from 85 specimens.

I'll have the herring

It is embarrassing to admit that it was only at the Herring School Workshop last summer that it dawned on me that, as far as I knew, I had never eaten a herring. At a local grocery store I asked the clerk behind the seafood counter if only pickled herring was available, what about fresh? He told me to call any morning, except Sunday, before 11 a.m. They could order frozen herring for an afternoon delivery.

On a Saturday morning after the workshop, I called and as luck would have it, a friend answered the phone at the fish counter with the news that fresh herring, caught off Vancouver Island, had just been delivered. "We only get fresh herring about four times a year," he told me on the phone. "Why do you want them?"

I guess it seemed absurd that I would eat them. "Hold a few for me," I said. "I'll be right down."

"No hurry," he said. The store would be buying 10 pounds; it usually only sells about seven.

Eight herring, each about the length of my forearm, freshly gutted, ended up costing me $6.51. Scored and salted, placed on a barbecue, five minutes on each side, they were delicious. I was an instant convert. They had a taste similar to the meatiness of salmon without the bombast. It was a taste sensation that was subtle and deep. From my hours picking through lab samples with Caldwell, I recognized the larger bones, and even came up with a name or two. As for the smallest, the only option was to crunch and swallow.

I thought of what Lepofsky had said one day as she guided a group of students to archaeological sites on Quadra Island, just north of Comox, about biological impoverishment darkening our vision of the past. The ecological baseline has shifted so severely, she said, that when we look to the past, we can't see its diversity. I thought, too, about Washington and her frustration at the pace of our learning. It made me realize that my own herring conversion -- writ large -- was part of the goal of the Herring School.

Since that first conversation with McKechnie, I'd started to look past salmon. If the Herring School could get the rest of British Columbia to do that -- or even a tenth of us, even the foodies who want to make dinner choices matter -- they'd be getting somewhere. [Tyee]

Jude Isabella is a science writer, managing editor of YES Mag, the Science Magazine for Adventurous Minds, and a graduate student in the anthropology department at the University of Victoria.

31 Comments:

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  • MichaelT

    29 weeks ago

    thanks for this!

    thanks for this!

  • Ramona

    29 weeks ago

    How are salmon farm diseases and sea lice affecting herring?

    It is timely to see an article about the herring that are so important to the ecosystem of the BC coast. I witnessed something spectacular this summer when balls of herring showed up in the Sointula Harbour. They were so thick that the water looked black in places. It soon became apparent that the herring were covered in sea lice. The herring were still in the harbour this fall and were bleeding from their fins and dying. In light of the European strain of ISA virus that has shown up in our wild pacific salmon I am concerned about the effects of foreign viruses disease from salmon farms on the herring and all our aquatic species. It appears that DFO and the Federal and Provincial Governments have been playing Russian roulette in the Pacific Ocean. The salmon farm corporations are using the tactics of the the professional denial industry used by the big tobaaco and oil companies. The positive finding Of the ISA virus in two sockeye was made by a well respected lab. The faciity is one of only two in the world designated as an ISA reference lab by the world Organization for Animal Health. Now there have been more positive tests for this virus in Coho and Chum salmon. The salmon farmers and DFO both seem in denial about these finding and imply they could be false. DFO appears to be protecting the foriegn owned salmon farms instead of protecting our Pacific ocean ecosystem.

  • Fish-counter

    29 weeks ago

    Back to the herring....

    Herring, Eulachon, Sand-lance, shrimp, plankton, etc. are all part of the food web. So were the whales in the Strait of Georgia until 1907-1911, when the whaling industry wiped them out. Imagine the life that was once part of the Salish Sea, and look at it today.

    It isn't all bad news though. In Nanaimo for example, we have salmon returning to creeks where they have not been seen in living memory. In others, they are more numerous than in recent history. There are Coho rearing in the Strait of Georgia again - the Bluebacks of yesteryear. The message to me is clear; we CAN bring back these runs, and we are on the cusp of a fish stock revival.

    True, the ISA virus is a potential threat, but 15 years ago some people were predicting that Atlantic salmon would colonise every stream on the BC coast. It didn't happen because conditions here do not suit Atlantic salmon. We don't know why, but they just don't take here.

    Sea lice are not the salmon-extermination threat they were purported to be a few years ago. Nothing is that simple, and some of the data was skewed to make it look worse than it is.

    Years ago, fisheries biologists toiled away at an exercise that looked completely academic; the Wild samon Policy. Today, I heard a commentator saying that all we need to do is to implement that policy and all will be well, and that may be the way forward.

    That said, fisheries biologists should not need bodyguard when they attend the Cohen Commission hearings, to gag them from speaking to the press. We need to ramp down the drama on both sides of these issues, put our paranoia back in the box, and get down to solving the problems. That is easier said than done in a province where people would rather cling to their conspiracy theories because they prefer drama to data.

    Imagine the Strait of Georgia with the large whales back! The whale-watching dollars would be in the millions.

  • marine1941

    29 weeks ago

    Herring....DFO isnt doing any science, glad someone is

    Have a look at the decline of herring in BC Waters, and you can see that DFO has not bothered to learn what Washington and Oregon learned long ago about herring biology. With a "NEW" method of assessment, DFO is planning to increase the commercial harvest of herring in the Gulf of Georgia this year, far above what First Nations commercial harvesters think is a sustainable level....and the Gulf of Georgia is THE ONLY AREA OF THE BC COAST WHERE THERE ARE ENOUGH HERRING LEFT TO SUSTAIN ANY HARVEST AT ALL...ALL OTHER AREAS ARE PERMANENTLY CLOSED TO HARVEST.

  • Waltz

    29 weeks ago

    Good work !

    Thanks so much for this most informative article.

  • Lawrence

    29 weeks ago

    The DFO IS helping

    up in Squamish.

    Something truly interesting is happening up at the end of Howe Sound.

    The Streamkeepers, these are volunteer environmentalists who mainly clear spawning streams and keep track of the runs, have made a startling discovery.

    They found that herring that laid eggs on creosoted pilings would die, and when they covered the pilings of Squamish terminals with landscaping cloth the eggs prospered.

    The dock also kept the sun and frost off the eggs so they had an excellent survival rate.

    The streamkeeper Dr. Jonn Matsen and his pals, then suspended curtains of the cloth under the docks and that doubled the egg laying area.

    The number of herring produced by this method now number in the trillions and are attracting predators such as dolphins and whales to Howe Sound, and hopefully some salmon will return to this once rich fishery.

    Environmentalists such as Retired teacher,and streamkeeper Jack Cooley have been fighting the government to clean up Howe Sound for 40 years and it's finally working.

    The runoff from Brittiana Mines among other things that had sterilized a large area of the Sound was recently stopped, and low and behold Squamish super-environmentalist John Bucannon got some pictures of Salmon spawning in Britannia Creek for the first time in a hundred years.

    The DFO does help the local environmentalists when they can.

  • b.egan

    29 weeks ago

    Thanks for this great piece ...

    ... on an unheralded (not to mention tasty and nutritious) species. A reminder of how much we have lost, in biomass, diversity, and ecological knowledge. Wonderful to hear about the passionate herring lovers and their excellent and important work.

  • pwlg

    29 weeks ago

    herring oh herring where for art thou

    I have had the opportunity to get up and close to these fish during their spawning time. To see the waters white from their milt, to see thousands crowded together in their annual festival for the future is inspiring.

    I remember the days living in Steveston when the fires of the cannery reduction boilers turned millions of freshly caught herring into fish meal to feed to factory poultry farms. The sky filled with darkened smoke and the steam coming from the stacks precipitated the offal smell into our living rooms.

    Later I learned the impacts from this type of fishery. The Japanese roe fishery changed the practice of catching herring for their protein content to feed to poultry. The catch was greatly decreased and the economic benefits greatly increased. At least for awhile.

    I was wondering if the researchers found any relationship between herring and salmon populations and the whaling and sealing harvesting activities by both Russian and Europeans that took place on the coast of BC for many decades prior to the large concentration of Europeans settling on the land here.

    When early settlers speak of salmon in the streams so thick one could walk across on their backs was that due to the fact that seals and whales and other predators of salmon (and herring) had been virtually eliminated from the coast? The Hudson Bay Company gave up their posts in SE Alaska in the early 1850's due to the decline in seal, sea otters and other fur bearing ocean going mammals.

    When the fast ferries were still operating from Horseshoe Bay to Departure Bay they crossed through one of the entrances to Howe Sound. While sailing with a friend at the entry between Bowen Island and Lighthouse Point we had to change course to prevent coming into contact with one of the fast cats. We passed over the stern wake of the ship only to smell and see something terrible. These ships sucked up huge volumes of sea water which was used in the propulsion systems (like a large jet boat). The ferry had passed over a ball of herring and had turned their living mass into a sea of grey stinking horror.

    I don't think the planners of this type of ferry took herring migration seriously when designing them.

    Some may lament the passing of the fast ferries but herring do not.

    I was also privileged to witness the eulachon harvest in Bella Coola when there was still a viable migration of these small fish. I got to taste the oil, a taste one needs to cultivate, and have an early spring feast of these oily and tasty fish. Eulachons and herring were valuable to the first people on the coast. Their early spring arrival provided fresh nutrition and relief from a long dark cold wet winter.

    Keep up the good research work. Looking forward to reading more on this.

  • igbymac

    29 weeks ago

    FastCats and herring

    "I don't think the planners of this type of ferry took herring migration seriously when designing them."

    I recall the government being advised before construction that the FastCats were not suitable for our waters, and this being one of the reasons I read about at the time or shortly thereafter.

  • VivianLea Doubt

    29 weeks ago

    an iconic fish, indeed...

    You have convinced me that the herring ought to be the emblem of BC. Obviously, blowing air out the anus is the very evocation of our political history, and let's be frank, probably explains our destruction of many fisheries as well as other resources.

    Yes, it's a time-honoured tradition in BC and we ought to have a fishy symbol that more truly mirrors our history.

  • Iwonder

    29 weeks ago

    Herring

    It amazes me that a west coast person who wears the claim of being well informed did not know the importance of Herring.

    Have you never caught a pickled herring and put it in a barrel?

    Shame on you!

  • Iwonder

    29 weeks ago

    Past food practices.

    You have probably never eaten a garter snake either--?beaver tail?

    Some of you young people have neither taste nor couth.

  • zalm

    29 weeks ago

    Superb article

    ...and some fabulous comments too. Congrats to all and thanks for the education!

  • doggone

    29 weeks ago

    Good post

    I will not charge in here but I'm watching.

  • realisticman

    29 weeks ago

    King Herring

    The herring fishery of Europe is often considered to be the primary reason that enabled international trade, the industrial revolution, and strong powerful nations that explored the world. The herring was THE primary source of protein for all of Northern Europe for centuries. The Scottish herring fishery was at it's peak the largest fishery in the world. Schools of herring sometime contained billions of fish. The fact that fresh herring goes off quickly accelerated the development of pickling and particularly, smoking food. A king erected a statue to a man who devised a method for smoking a herring whole (the bloater). The Dutch method of removing the innards and pickling was a huge development. The business was huge all over Europe. The history of the herring is the history of Europe.

    http://www.coml.org/discoveries/discoveries/historical/hmap-important.htm

    This is just a taste. There is a feast of reading available to those that seek it.

    Fresh herring is still readily available in fish shops all over Europe. It was what I bought as a young poor teenager living alone. Even mackerel were more expensive. It has been that way for centuries. The development of the beef, pork and chicken businesses has relegated the herring to the less desired 'fishy' category. More for us that love this magnificent fish that lives up there with the other best fish, the mackerel, the sardine and the anchovy.

  • anne cameron

    29 weeks ago

    why

    did the author not explain to the readers WHY the Tl'amin no longer have a herring fishery? It isn't because of any natural ebb and flow of fish stocks, it isn't because , after twelve thousand years the herring suddenly changed their migratory pattern, it's because DFO allowed the ENTIRE herring fleet to park itself, side by side, across the water between Tla'amin and an off-shore island, and fish, fish, fish until there wasn't a herring left to spawn. The entire herring run at Tla'amin was fished out and in the process wiped out.

    The Fisheries "experts" deny that this piece of rank stupidity wiped out the herring run. They have several shabby and shop-worn excuses for why all of a sudden the herring fishery collapsed. But it isn't coincidence that the year "the city of lights" was allowed to fish out the area was the last year we had the priviledge to see Scuttle Bay teeming with silvery spawners.

    Without herring we can kiss goodbye to most other species of carnivourous fish; salmon, halibut, ling cod...will starve because of DFO bureaucratic stupidity.

  • anne cameron

    29 weeks ago

    ah but...

    the West Coast of the Island might be officially "closed" but exceptions can be made and a few years ago the commercial fleet was screaming because they hadn't met their quota and the fish were so small they were swimming through the webbing of the nets...so a section off the West Coast of the Island was opened and the boats swarmed in. Just off Queen's Cove they were pulling up nets loaded and even over-loaded with herring, nets so full the surplus was falling out and floating, dead, on the surface of the sea.

    They actually over-fished the quota given them.

    That kind of raw greed is a major reason the herring stocks are low and the fishery is in deep trouble. Instead of allowing over-fishing in the Gulf of Georgia, DFO should shut the entire fishery down for four years, give the fish a chance to recover. Allow only subsistance food fishery, get the big commercial boats out of the picture.

    We watched what was happening at Queen's Cove and some of us wept. It's sickening. Such greed has to be self destructive.

  • freewilly

    29 weeks ago

    wiped out our herring stocks?

    Have we really wiped out our herring stocks from over fishing? I can't understand this, Ive only recently become a herring convert. When I was growing up, my parents used to bring back a pale of herring from the Steveston Docks. As a kid I hated these things. I like them now but I certainly dont live on a diet of these so called mighty fish.Ive had them pickled in some sort of curry chutney, a danish thing, yummy.

    What the heck do they do with these fish? They must go into catfood or go overseas. Not many folks here will eat them. Most of us are, as the author say salmon-centric, Cod and halibut too. I doubt many young folks even like seafood of any kind. At least the ones I know. Strange, living in BC.

    I suspect development and sprawl too close the shore has something to do with the loss of herring habitat, especially in the Goergia Strait introduction of foreign critters, logging and the rich kelp beds needed for herring populations have begun to disappear. Without an impartial body of government scientists (DFO)to give us the real truth, we may never know.

    The sports fishing industry has certainly changed things over the last 80 years. Introduction of all sorts of fish, rainbow trout, cuthroat, brown trout, carp, strange species of fish to lakes and rivers that were never meant to sustain fish at all, has occured. This was a deliberate effort.
    All manner of amphibians, lizards and frogs have been wiped out. Whole eco-systems have changed and new insect populations now flourish. In this precarious balancing act of nature, how does that affect our oceans and coastline? All down the food chain, eco-system changes from the interior of BC have indirect consequences on oceans, hard to beleive, and harder to connect the dots.

    There is no certainty atlantic salmon that have escaped, will not flourish in the future. Its way to early to say.
    Not only fish, but plants and alien molluscs have altered the indigineous populations.
    BC is not what it was.

    Just thinking about all the variables and influences, I find it difficult to beleive BC fishers alone, have wiped out our herring stocks, and I recognize our stewardship practices have been the pits. Nature is more resilient than we can imagine. Life will go on. We should be concerned and prepared for how nature bites back. We may never get to eat one another, but Slug burger sliders served with crispy sea lice maybe mouth watering and posh in our crazy near future.

  • doggone

    29 weeks ago

    Freewilly: Ain't it!

    I visited an aunt in Denmark and went to a restaraunt and ate "Sild". I love pickled Herring and sardines and "Uno" and you name it from the sea. What is that canned fish the Brits like? Kipper - same sort of fish.
    Been watching this coast since I got here in the early '70s. Seen some disgusting changes.
    Guess I have "limited" out - no need for a "Salmon Sticker" this year. I know a couple of the Boneheads who work or worked for DFO Nanaimo. They are good people.
    The image of herring swarms covered in lice makes my skin crawl.
    Gonna be a long strange trip

  • Fish-counter

    29 weeks ago

    Marine 1941 is right. DFO in't doing much science these days

    Their budgets have been reduced steadily over the past 10 years. They are more reliant on volunteers, every year, for stock assessment data. Believe me, I know.

    Interestingly, this is not the first time government departments have been gutted. If DFO is a silhouette of its former self, there is precedent. No offence intended to DFO biologists.

    From Wikipedia:
    "The word "silhouette" derives from the name of Étienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister who, in 1759, was forced by France's credit crisis during the Seven Years War to impose severe economic demands upon the French people, particularly the wealthy.

    Because of de Silhouette's austere economies, his name became eponymous with anything done or made cheaply and so with these outline portraits. Prior to the advent of photography, silhouette profiles cut from black card were the cheapest way of recording a person's appearance."

    Plus qu'ils change, plus ils resteent exactement le meme.

  • Fish-counter

    29 weeks ago

    Marine 1941 is right. DFO in't doing much science these days

    Their budgets have been reduced steadily over the past 10 years. They are more reliant on volunteers, every year, for stock assessment data. Believe me, I know.

    Interestingly, this is not the first time government departments have been gutted. If DFO is a silhouette of its former self, there is precedent. No offence intended to DFO biologists.

    From Wikipedia:

    "The word "silhouette" derives from the name of Étienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister who, in 1759, was forced by France's credit crisis during the Seven Years War to impose severe economic demands upon the French people, particularly the wealthy. Because of de Silhouette's austere economies, his name became eponymous with anything done or made cheaply and so with these outline portraits.

    Prior to the advent of photography, silhouette profiles cut from black card were the cheapest way of recording a person's appearance."

  • freewilly

    29 weeks ago

    volunteers can do alot

    "They are more reliant on volunteers, every year, for stock assessment data. Believe me, I know."

    I also know this to be true as well. I used to be a volunteer at a small hatchery in the lowermainland. Completely run by volunteers, mentored and managed by the DFO. The volunteers raised the fry and allowed school kids to release them in the spring. They would also tag fish, treat them disease, they even raised the money to build an enumeration fence (a sort of damn with a gate or box to trap the spawners for egg takes)

    Some of the hatchery volunteers took a course, on identifying the health of rivers and lakes. It was run by some watershed society (i cant remember)

    After that, the hatchery volunteers had a new tool and skill to offer school kids coming through the hatchery.
    There is something on the Surrey website about Benthic Invertibrates if anyone is interested, or contact your local watershed society. I'd love to take that course again. Id like to know if there is a course on identifying the health of marine environments.

    I don't think I've seen sea lice but I have seen leeches attached to the gills of spawners, needless to say it isnt pretty.

  • freewilly

    29 weeks ago

    some links

    Heres some links to DFO about herring. Yeh there has been some science done. History of herring etc...
    warning, this is very sciency, so best to keep a browser window opened to the wiki, unless your a biologist. There are a number of links at the bottom of the article as well

    http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/species-especes/pelagic-pelagique/herring-hareng/hertags/pages/default4-eng.htm

    http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/decisions/fm-2010-gp/pac-004-eng.htm

    Lawrence makes some good points. The DFO really do try to help when they can. Also the 'streamkeepers' he speaks of do good work.

  • Fish-counter

    28 weeks ago

    Volunteering; a great way to go broke.

    What other industry besides the fishery relies on volunteers to restore the raw material?

    Do forestry companies rely on volunteer tree planters? do doctors, lawyers, teachers, cops and city planners work for nothing? No they don't. In Nanaimo our former City manager is still on full pay, for two whole years after retiring, and he does nothing whatsoever for the community. His severance pay is costing taxpayers $400,000.

    But is there a nickel to pay people to restore our streams? No. Yet while salmon are becoming an endangered species, Jerry Berry is raking in the cash and volunteers are being recruited to clear city parks of invasive plants.

    It doesn't compute. Few volunteers can be found and only 27% of the eligible electorate voted in the last municipal election.

    The herring are on their own.

  • tobord

    28 weeks ago

    Wow that's a lot of herring

    Wow that's a lot of herring information...

    http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/MyCurriki/Profile?mode=public
    http://www.cypressskiclub.com/user/3264
    http://www.discogs.com/user/belltor
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    http://www.robotentertainment.com/user/thredles
    http://www.sanramon.org/user/20241
    http://www.robotentertainment.com/user/ultmati
    http://www.robotentertainment.com/user/sangoku
    http://www.sanramon.org/user/20246
    http://www.sanramon.org/user/20186
    http://www.cruisingworld.com/user/94296
    http://www.sanramon.org/user/20208
    http://www.sanramon.org/user/20184
    http://www.creativepro.com/user/154422
    http://www.drupalsites.net/user/josiph
    http://www.dreamstime.com/Sangoku143_info
    http://www.discogs.com/user/flareity
    http://www.drupalsites.net/user/belltor
    http://www.doctorslounge.com/index.php/member/2879
    http://www.eastafritac.org/index.php?/member/29795/
    http://www.eastafritac.org/index.php?/member/29688/
    http://www.doctorslounge.com/index.php/member/2992
    http://www.eastafritac.org/index.php?/member/29729/
    http://www.cracked.com/members/flareity/
    http://www.cracked.com/members/milaina/
    http://www.creativepro.com/user/154425
    http://www.cracked.com/members/sangoku/
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    http://www.codeproject.com/Members/jeff-perez
    http://www.goswim.tv/users/14531/belltor
    http://www.greenfaucet.com/flodden
    http://www.go2album.com/pg/profile/josiph
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    http://www.greenfaucet.com/josiph
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    http://www.ericbaber.com/training/user/view.php?id=324&course=1
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    http://www.hpa-pod.org/user/view.php?id=2411&course=1
    http://www.idealist.org/manage/pJSZwJkKm4w4
    http://www.hercampus.com/users/josiph
    http://www.hercampus.com/users/thredles
    http://www.hercampus.com/users/ultmati
    http://www.go2album.com/pg/profile/sangoku
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    http://www.hpa-pod.org/user/view.php?id=2410&course=1
    http://www.greenfaucet.com/milaina1/56967
    http://www.ericbaber.com/training/user/view.php?id=316&course=1
    http://www.fandy.com/users/flodden
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    http://www.eastafritac.org/index.php?/member/30036/
    http://www.fandy.com/users/milaina
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    http://www.emaxhealth.com/users/flareity
    http://www.fandy.com/users/belltor
    http://www.ericbaber.com/training/user/view.php?id=311&course=1
    http://www.fandy.com/users/flareity
    http://www.ericbaber.com/training/user/view.php?id=306&course=1
    http://www.emaxhealth.com/users/sangoku

  • Fish-counter

    28 weeks ago

    Here is an abstract of a report on salmon monitoring

    This is one of our icon species. What chance do herring have? You tell me.

    Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 65(12): 2712–2718 (2008) | doi:10.1139/F08-174 | © 2008 NRC Canada

    Ghost runs: management and status assessment of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) returning to British Columbia’s central and north coasts

    M. H.H. Price, C. T. Darimont, N. F. Temple, and S. M. MacDuffee

    Abstract: The management of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) populations, which are spatially distributed across thousands of waterways in coastal British Columbia, Canada, presents considerable challenges to resource managers. We evaluated the efficacy of salmon management by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) over the past 55 years in two key areas: (i) the achievement of internally generated target escapement levels and (ii) escapement monitoring. We show that less than 4% of monitored streams (n = 7 of 215), which represent a small fraction of all salmon-bearing waterways (n = 2592), have consistently met escapement targets since 1950. During this same period, the number of streams monitored by DFO has simultaneously decreased. Further, current monitoring efforts fall short of encompassing the range of salmon diversity identified within recently designated conservation units. Importantly, we found that this erosion of monitoring effort has been biased towards dropping smaller runs that failed to meet target escapements in the previous decade. We suggest that such increasingly selective monitoring is presenting a progressively more biased evaluation of population health. In addition to fostering a “shifting baseline” syndrome, we conclude that these changes to monitoring can not provide data required for precautionary harvest management under the high exploitation levels that these runs experience.

  • Steelhead

    28 weeks ago

    ISA

    The importation of exotic species is a bad idea. Fish farms have done that over the objections of those of us who know this obvious fact. Now we have ISA that was brought to our coast by exotic vectors. We know what viruses can do. ISA has the potential to devastate Pacific Salmon. Given the magnitude of the threat, the only rational way to act is proactively and immediately implement a moratorium of fish farming on this coast.

  • Fish-counter

    28 weeks ago

    You are right, Steelhead, but that won't happen

    So what is your Plan 'B'?

  • freewilly

    28 weeks ago

    re Volunteering; a great way to go broke

    It is weird, those are our screwy values and priorities, but there is something that warms my cockles when the marinas, lodges and sports fishers donate their time to raise money and run these hatcheries. they figure they are putting something back and they get an education in the process.
    im glad they do, they impact the marine environment, so let them work for 0.
    .
    we have a volunteer ambulance and fire fighting service. heck where we live, if we didnt have volunteers, we would be dead in the water (not that we're not there already).
    Our community only survives, (not sure if you can even call it that), on volunteers.

    Our village has squandered the few dollars it had saved last year on a particular 'thing'. Warned, They went ahead anyways, huberous and arrogance I think.

    "His severance pay is costing taxpayers $400,000."

    sounds too familiar

    I'd like to argue some points but I can't. When there is noone to pay, folks have to do it themselves.Thats a fact of living in rural BC

  • Fish-counter

    28 weeks ago

    Right again, Freewilly.

    But why is it so often the poor that works to keep the rich, fat bastards in champagne and lox?

    The main resource your community has is the volunteer spirit. It doesn't alter the sad fact that there is only one price for gasoline, groceries and shelter. If only volunteers got a special price at the pumps and at the cash register.

    Meanwhile, if we can't even protect the salmon, how can we protect the herring?

  • freewilly

    28 weeks ago

    re:Volunteering; a great way to go broke

    It is weird, those are our screwy values and priorities, but there is something that warms my cockles when the marinas, lodges and sports fishers donate their time to raise money and run these hatcheries. they figure they are putting something back and they get an education in the process.
    im glad they do, they impact the marine environment, so let them work for 0.
    .
    we have a volunteer ambulance and fire fighting service. heck where we live, if we didnt have volunteers, we would be dead in the water (not that we're not there already).
    Our community only survives, (not sure if you can even call it that), on volunteers.

    Our village has squandered the few dollars it had saved last year on a particular 'thing'. Warned, They went ahead anyways, huberous and arrogance I think.

    "His severance pay is costing taxpayers $400,000."

    sounds too familiar

    I'd like to argue some points but I can't. When there is noone to pay, folks have to do it themselves.Thats a fact of living in rural BC

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