By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
With the announcement earlier this week that the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery would go on two-hour notice at 8 a.m. Thursday, Fish and Game held a virtual meeting Tuesday for permit holders, processors, subsistence harvesters and others involved in the annual herring harvest.
Effective Thursday morning, Fish and Game can open a location for purse seining on as little as two hours of advance notice.
More than four dozen individuals attended Tuesday’s virtual meeting.
Fish and Game area management biologist Aaron Dupuis led the Zoom videoconference, which lasted almost two hours, mostly providing information about last year’s fishery, with a report on the subsistence fishery.
This year’s guideline harvest level for the Sitka Sound sac roe harvest is 30,124 tons, with a forecast average weight of 134-gram fish across all age classes.
Depuis was on the fishing grounds aboard the R/V Kestrel this afternoon, and reported large schools of herring near Mountain Point, and from the north end of Middle Island to north end of Big Gavanski, all north of town.
No test samples were collected.
At the meeting on Tuesday Depuis said the 2022 guideline harvest level was 45,164 tons, and took place from March 26 to April 10 with fishing taking place throughout that time, with only a one-day break. The total harvest was 25,090 tons, which came to about 56 percent of the overall quota. Spawn began on March 27 and continued through the end of April.
“Overall the fishery was fairly successful,” he said.
He said the biggest challenge last year was the diesel spill in Olga Strait on March 21, only days before herring fishing started in nearby Sitka Sound. Fish and Game kept track of the spill and the oil sheen on the water in real time, and worked closely with other agencies throughout.
“As you know from the moment we were informed of that spill we were taking the fishery one day at a time, and really there were no options off the table, including a full closure of the commercial fishery if it was warranted,” Dupuis said. With Alaska’s zero-tolerance policy on contaminated seafood, Fish and Game did its best to be cautious, “not overreact,” and decided to go ahead with the fishery as planned.
F&G research coordinator Kyle Hebert showed slides of 2022 spawning activities, which he said were pretty similar to previous years. He said 2022 was a “high mileage year for spawning,” with 91.5 nautical miles measured, the fifth highest in the history of the fishery. Substantial spawning was seen on the Kruzof Island shoreline and northern and eastern part of Sitka Sound last year.
Hebert displayed a map that showed minimal overlap between spawning areas and the diesel sheen.
He explained Fish and Game estimates the adult spawning herring biomass with a process that’s been used for decades, and using “an unbiased estimate of the total number of eggs from the Sitka Sound herring spawning stock.”
Fish and Game also collects samples on the grounds during the fishery to help estimate weight and age composition of the catch.
“There were a lot of samples,” Hebert said. “All of these samples generally show the same thing; primarily the population was dominated by age-six herring,” the result of a large age class first observed in 2019 as age-3 herring.
F&G biometrician Dr. Sherri Dressel reviewed the data used to calculate information such as total egg estimates, weight at age and overall biomass.
“We can convert every estimate of eggs we get from a survey using how many eggs per female and a fecundity relationship, how big they are - you can convert and figure out how many fish laid the eggs we saw,” she said. From the 14.1 million eggs estimated last year, she said, “we can say there were about 200,000 tons of fish that came together to create those eggs.”
The estimate for 2023 is 150,000 tons of biomass.
Dressel also reviewed the data on recruitment, which is variable from year to year. She noted the biggest recruitment year in the fishery’s history was 2019, which turned out to be about three times the size of the next highest recruitment year, 2003.
“Last year, those fish were age six,” which constituted 68 percent of the stock, she said. This year, that class of fish, coming back at age 7, are estimated to constitute 61 percent of the stock.
Dressel noted this class was not fished on as 3- and 4-year old fish because there was no harvest in 2019 and 2020; they were not marketable size.
Most of the fish this year are age 7; and the average weight of the herring this year is estimated at 134 grams.
From the subsistence section, subsistence resource specialist Lauren Sill told the group about the subsistence harvest monitoring program and the results of the 2022 subsistence harvest. Efforts to protect subsistence included closing areas of Sitka Sound to sac roe seining.
She said 2022 was a “relatively high (subsistence) harvest compared to the last five years or so.” The subsistence harvest was estimated at 135,000 pounds. “There were fewer harvesters in 2022 than 2021, but there’s a substantially higher harvest,” she said. In the roe on branches harvest, “more factors really need to be considered such as location of the spawn, the duration of the spawn, the weather – all these other things that go into making a successful harvest.”
Kasiana Island and Middle Island were popular areas for subsistence harvesting in the period for which F&G has consistent subsistence harvest data, from 2011 through 2022. Other areas are the northern portion of Sitka Sound, Eastern and Promisla bays, the Siginaka islands, the Magoun Islands, and southern Sitka Sound.
Most subsistence gatherers share their harvest, Sill said.
“We do suspect there are pretty high levels of sharing by non-harvesters as well – people who receive eggs go on to share them further,” Sill said. “Reciprocal sharing of resources is a primary characteristic of subsistence economies.”
Herring eggs have been directly shared with at least 41 communities, with secondary sharing going to 8 to 15 communities, reaching every location of the state and beyond, she said.
Sill said most of the herring egg harvesting is done by laying out branches, and less than 10 percent is from kelp or hair seaweed. A small portion is kept by the harvester, and half of the remainder is shared within Sitka, and the other half going out of town.
“Some years more is shipped out and some year more is shared within town,” Sill said.
Records show most harvesters use skiffs less than 20 feet, about a third are using boats 20 to 24 feet, and 20 percent harvest with a commercial vessel. Most harvesters go out for two to five households, and an estimated 20 percent harvest for 6 to 10 households, or over 100 households.
Sitka Tribe of Alaska Resource Protection Department director Jeff Feldpausch encouraged subsistence harvesters to contact him at 907-747-7469 if contact information has changed, or if you haven’t been surveyed in the past and plan to harvest this year.
He also addressed concerns about theft, and said harvesters should make sure their sets and floats have names and addresses on them. Thefts can be reported anonymously by talking to troopers or Feldpausch, who will forward the information. He also encouraged harvesters to retrieve equipment after the season.
Also at the meeting, Dupuis discussed the department’s interactive map, which shows results from aerial and vessel surveys. Today’s map showed numbers of sea lions and humpback whales in the survey area north and south of town and along the Kruzof shoreline.
