By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
With no decision yet made on whether to call an opening in the sac roe herring fishery, the Department of Fish and Game has sent its research vessel, R/V Kestrel, back to Petersburg.
“We’re not saying we’re done for the season,” said Area Management Biologist Eric Coonradt. “We’re saying we’ll continue to look with industry boats and a plane instead.” Only one test set has been conducted in the past five days.
Fish and Game uses the Kestrel to help manage the fishery, including sonar surveys and collecting herring quality samples from the seine fleet. The seine fleet stopped volunteering for test fishing on Friday.
“We had very limited test fishing going on and that’s the only way we get information on the quality of the fish,” Coonradt said today. “If we don’t, it’s difficult to call an opening. If the fleet isn’t willing to test fish it’s not worth the Kestrel’s time assessing volume if we don’t know what the quality of the fish are.”
The fish in test sets conducted since March 17 have been consistently small, showing herring of similar size, and within a percentage point of each other in average roe maturity, Coonradt said, “which means we’re not getting the separation of age classes and size classes we see sometimes. Sometimes we don’t see it at all.”
He said there are still seine boats awaiting word on an opening, and he’s received a few offers from permit holders for test fishing. The fishery has been on two-hour notice for an opening since March 17. The guideline harvest this year is 12,869 tons.
In an aerial survey today from Crawfish Inlet to St. John Baptist Bay, Coonradt reported schools in the Magoun Islands, Kanga Bay, Windy Pass, West Crawfish Inlet, Cedar Pass, and Crawfish Inlet.
“The only active spawn observed today was a spot spawn north of Povorotni Point,” F&G said in a news release. “Cumulative spawn to date is 1.6 nautical miles. The highest concentrations of herring predators were found in Krestof Sound, west of Shoals Point, and in Windy Passage.”
The next F&G update is scheduled for Friday, after the department’s next aerial survey.
