Tag Archives: Herring Run

Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Feds ignore calls for moratorium, approve commercial herring fishing

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By Sonal Gupta, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

When Kurt Irwin was growing up near Salt Spring Island on British Columbia’s southern coast, spring meant herring season. He remembers the ocean turning white as the small fish filled the harbours, the sky alive with gulls and salmon chasing them just below the surface.

“We haven’t seen that in many years… They [commercial fishing boats] literally fished it out,” said the now 58-year-old Irwin, a councillor for the Penelakut Tribe, located near Chemainus on Vancouver Island. Their members have also been pushing for a five-year moratorium on commercial herring fisheries to allow stocks to recover.

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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

‘Industry doesn’t understand what our people know’: WSÁNEĆ chiefs call for halt to commercial herring fisheries

By Spencer Sacht-Lund, IndigiNews, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter.

WSÁNEĆ* hereditary chiefs are calling for an immediate moratorium on all commercial herring fisheries in the Salish Sea prior to the season’s expected start later this month.

Surrounded by relatives and members of the community at Tulista Park in “Sidney,” overlooking the ocean, four hereditary chiefs read aloud a joint declaration Wednesday morning — coming together for a public, unified call to action for the first time in 40 years, the leaders said.

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Animals, Rivers & Oceans

The Pacific Herring Spawn and Nurseries Project

A citizen scientist project to photograph Pacific herring spawn along the West Coast, from Alaska down to California, has been underway for close to two months. It is based in the Comox-Courtenay area, and one of its many partners is the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI).

Project lead Jacqueline Huard, a scientist with Project Watershed,  explained, “I work with the Coastal Forage Fish Network. We are very community scientist based and working on a herring project in iNaturalist just was a natural fit for us. I wanted to encourage the folks that we work with to put their data somewhere where they could also access it. The goal is twofold, both to collect some data and address a gap, but also to get it out to the public and have a publicly available data set for the public created by community scientists.”

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Rivers & Oceans

Satellites track the tiny silver fish hugely important to marine life

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A new scientific endeavour has taken to the sky using high-tech drones and satellite images to understand better the annual spring herring spawn vital to salmon and wildlife on the West Coast. 

Between February and March each year, frigid ocean waters transform to a milky tropical-looking turquoise green when male herring release milt to fertilize the countless eggs deposited by females on eelgrass, kelp and seaweed fringing coastal shores.

Unpredictable and dramatic, the small silver fishes’ spawning event is large and best monitored from great heights, said Loïc Dallaire, a researcher with the SPECTRAL Remote Sensing Laboratory at the University of Victoria. 

“It’s one of the very few animal formations that we can see from space, excluding human developments and towns,” Dallaire said. 

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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.

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