This year’s controversial herring roe harvest is coming to a close in British Columbia, Canada’s Strait of Georgia.
Environmentalists have been voicing their opposition to the harvest, saying that a healthy herring fishery is vital to the ailing Chinook salmon fishery, which has experienced a dramatic multiyear drop in stocks.
The season was opened by Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans on Friday, 6 March. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans predicted fewer herring this year, resulting in a halving this year’s total allowable catch compared to last year’s. DFO said the cut was to smaller projected returns – it predicted a biomass of 27,000 to 110,000 MT for this year, as opposed to a biomass 67,000 to 221,400 MT last year.
There are five major herring fisheries off the coast of British Columbia, but the Strait of Georgia stock is the only one which scientists consider to be robust enough to support a commercial herring roe season. Department of Fisheries and Oceans Acting Regional Manager Brenda Spence is responsible for the fishery and believes that the proper steps have been taken.
“We do a comprehensive and consistent stock assessment program,” she said.
In just the first weekend after the opening, fishermen had nearly filled the quota of some 11,000 metric tons (MT) of herring, according to The Globe and Mail.
But environmentalists aren’t on the same page.
“[DFO] is managing this fish to extinction,” said Ian McAllister, executive director of Canadian conservation organization Pacific Wild. “It’s painful to witness this, it’s so important for salmon and whales.”
McAllister said fishermen appear to be catching juvenile herring.
“These are the classic signs of overfishing,” he said. He suggests that some of the funding provided by the federal government to help in the orca whale recovery should be paid to herring fishermen in lieu of them catching fish.
McAllister’s group, as well as other environmental organizations, have promoted the idea of a ban on the commercial roe season to allow the fishery to recover.
Fishermen in British Columbia are also dealing with a collapse in exports to Asia, according to the Vancouver Sun.
B.C. Seafood Alliance Executive Director Christina Burridge said the shrinking of the Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean markets due to the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously depressed exports of wild-caught B.C. seafood – a sector valued at CAD 1.1 billion (USD 789.8 million, EUR 706 million) in 2018 and supporting more than 9,000 jobs.
“We haven’t had many fisheries this year, so it’s a bit too soon to say, but we’ll clearly see, I believe, an across-the-board decline in landed value this year,” Burridge said.
Burridge said geoduck and Dungeness crab exports have fallen drastically, and she is worried those involved in the upcoming spot prawn season will also have trouble finding a market for their catch. Halibut sales will also be hurt if the U.S. Pacific Northwest – the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States – enacts restrictions on the restaurant industry.
Canadian halibut is sold “almost entirely sold to white tablecloth restaurants from Vancouver to San Diego down the I-5 corridor,” Burridge said. “I think where the level of anxiety probably is, at the moment is, what happens if there is a major outbreak in the U.S. down (that) I-5 corridor.”
The halibut fishery is due to open 20 March in B.C.
Earlier this week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a plan to introduce a CAD 1 billion (USD 718.1 million, EUR 641.6 million) assistance package to Canada’s 10 provinces, primarily directed to buttressing the country’s health care system.
Photo courtesy of TamasV/Shutterstock
