HERRING WERE ONCE PLENTIFUL ALONG THE WHOLE COAST
A VISION FOR THE FUTRURE
By using large mesh nets gillnetters can select for--catch--only the large valuable 6 to 7 year old fish which can be filled for human consumption as well as harvested for roe. Photo by Bob Cain
Experience from such countries as Norway and Peru reveal that the herring-like species, called clupeids, rebuild much more rapidly following fishing closures than do predatory fish such as cod and salmon. This is because herring are plankton feeders and they can readily and rapidly convert millions of tonnes of the ever-present and highly available plankton biomass into herring flesh.
It is thus possible to foresee a bright future for B.C's herring fishermen and the hundreds of species of birds, mammals, and fish that depend on herring-if we follow a prudent management course.
It is, in fact, very possible to rebuild all of B.C.'s herring stocks through the use of fishing closures. The closures must be long enough to ensure that the new herring population is composed of many large, mature (6 and 7 year old) fish and not mainly small, immature (3 year old) fish as is now the case.
Once rebuilt, it is clear that the natural productivity of the herring stocks can, in most years, produce a surplus for human harvest. But these must be "true" surpluses, using a biological definition of herring "stocks" founded in conservation and not a compromised definition designed to ensure that the high-volume corporate fishery can continue as it is today.
Also, in these days of "minimal waste, maximum value" it is publicly unacceptable to use only 10 percent of the landed herring biomass for human consumption. This is especially important, as herring flesh is so nutritious due to a particularly high Omega 3 content. All future fisheries must utilize the flesh for human food as well as the roe. This is presently the case in the Irish roe herring fishery.
A future selective herring fishery must be by gillnets, with a total phase out of the seiners, a conservation-dictated policy change recently undertaken in the California roe herring fishery. A future selective fishery would be based on many very small quotas measured in hundreds of pounds and no t thousands of metric tonnes, with a focus not on quantity but on quality.
A small-scale community-controlled herring fishery, with the value-added products processed locally in coastal communities, would achieve the maximum social benefits and best ensure conservation objectives.
An equal winner in a future herring fishery of this kind would be the sport fishing and eco-tourism industries, that would both benefit from the greater numbers of chinook and coho salmon, lingcod, and bird and mammals. Further, the real possibility exists that humpback whales will re-colonize the Strait of Georgia if the resident herring populations were fully restored.
The Strait of Georgia and all of the coastal waters of B.C. can teem again with life as they did in the past, if we as a society behave in a civilized fashion, and both restrain our commercial fishery and fully apply the scientific expertise we now possess. To get there, however, we must pause for a while to let the herring stocks rebuild. And we must apply real science and not "industrially-biased science", which was applied on Canada's east coast with such disastrous consequences.
