Animals, Rivers & Oceans

Herring Roe on the Beach at Smelt Bay

Early in the week of March 11th, during the annual herring run, a combination of weather and tides swept an unusual quantity of herring roe ashore at Smelt Bay.

On Tuesday the 12th of March, the roe in some places was piled 6-8 inches deep on the beach. From a distance it resembled lighter coloured sand piled on top of the familiar gray sand and shingle of Smelt Bay.

But on closer examination, the strangely shining, sparkling “sand” which looks almost like quartz…

… is actually an inconceivable number — millions upon millions — of fish eggs, the roe of the Pacific Herring, Clupea pallasii.

In places the piled roe was gullied by rain runoff and the falling tide so that its surprising depth was clearly visible.

The spawning herring must have loitered in the vicinity, because an unusually large mob of seagulls was very active over the shallows near shore about a quarter mile south of the park boundary.

Normally, herring attach their eggs to kelp and other seaweed — or to any vegetation in the intertidal zone. Marine biologists recommend leaving egg-bearing seaweed undisturbed on the beach, as the eggs can survive exposure between two high tides. So we can hope that many of the drifted eggs at Smelt Bay will have been carried back off the beach by the high tide, and may survive to hatch out.

First Nations people on the PNW coast took advantage of the herring’s habit of egg attachment and their reliable re-appearance each Spring; they submerged materials such as cedar strips and branches during the herring run, to collect the highly nutritious eggs. This year, rough weather may have shaken these millions of eggs loose from the seaweed and other plants to which the herring attached them, so they floated free to be driven up onto our beaches by wind and tide.

The herring have been returning to BC coastal waters to spawn for many thousands of years. As their extravagant spawning habits suggest, they are a “food fish” for many other species and an essential building block of the coastal marine food chain. BC continues to permit an annual herring fishery which has for many years been controversial. Critics cite field studies showing an overall species decline despite DFO’s catch limits and a strictly limited opening.

Sports fishing advocates as well as marine scientists are worried about a potential collapse of BC’s herring population, which would pull the nutritional rug out from under a whole pyramid of other species, from salmon to whales. Although the fishery was once very profitable due to high demand for herring roe from upmarket Japanese consumers, this demand has fallen off in recent years — and some critics say the fishery is desperately seeking a reason for its own continued existence despite falling profits and high environmental risk.

Ironically, one of the markets for BC herring is fish meal for the feeding of farmed Atlantic salmon. The net-pen salmon CAFO industry not only has documented negative effects on wild salmon via the proliferation of sea lice and salmonid viruses, it also helps to undercut one of their primary food sources.

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[All photos by author.]