By Sentinel Staff
Many of the out-of-town purse seine boats here for the herring sac roe fishery were headed home today, as the seasonal Sitka Sound fishery wound down for the year.
The Department of Fish and Game said it would continue conducting surveys to measure ongoing spawn, but doesn’t plan to publish further daily updates.
A test set conducted Tuesday in Windy Pass caught fish with only 8.4 percent mature roe and 2.4 percent immature roe, well below the 10 percent mature roe goal for commercial harvest, the department said.
An aerial survey Wednesday located 0.2 nautical miles of spawn along Kluichvoi Bay and Gornoi Island, bringing the total to 73.8 nautical miles this year.
All told, the commercial fleet of about 30 seiners pulled up about 10,900 tons of fish out of a guideline harvest level of 30,124 tons in openings that spanned about two weeks and in waters as far north as Salisbury Sound and southward to Dorothy Narrows.
