Sitka Sound Herring fishery wraps up

for the 2006 season

Mike Tozzo

April 14, 2006

Every year around the end of March fishermen in Southeast converge in Sitka Sound to harvest the Japanese delicacy of sac roe from herring. “The value is in the roe and I would say that about 100% of it goes to the Japanese market,” said Dave Gordon, area management biologist for Alaska Fish and Game in Sitka. The Sitka Sound Sac Roe fishery covers about 54 miles of spawn, which is a good thing according to Gordon.

The Sitka Sound herring sac roe fishery closed for the season at 6:30 p.m. on Wednseday, March 29. The fishery was open for three days this year on March 24, 26, 27 and a cooperative fishery being held from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on March 29 to collect the last 950 tons of herring. The guideline harvest level was 10,415 tons with 9,465 of those tons collected in the first three days. Patrick Wilson, plant manager at Petersburg Fisheries, said that the herring season went well for them as far as product goes but was unable to provide specific tonnage that was brought into the fishery.

The tonnage of herring collected out of Sitka Sound changes every year. According to Gordon they have a stock assessment program where they do a spawn deposition survey to estimate how many fish escape the fishery and make it to the beach to spawn. “We collect age samples from the spawning fish and that gives us the age break down of those fish,” said Gordon.

Age samples are also taken from the commercial catch and they measure that through the fish tickets. “With these numbers we can come up with a number of fish that age, that’s what we’re really estimating each year that have returned,” said Gordon. Herring first become mature at age three but Gordon says only a portion of those fish are mature enough to spawn.

“Over the years, findings have shown that about 30% of age threes are mature enough to spawn, 80% of age fours and close to 100% once they get to age five,” said Gordon. This information is important because the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has no way of recording the number of immature fish out there. “It’s all about calculating the biomass of mature herring,” said Gordon.

After calculating out the escapement for this year, ADF&G can come up with a forecast of what can be expected to return next year. “In recent years we’ve had fairly large quotas up above the 10,000 ton range,” said Gordon. “I think we’ve been above 10,000 tons seven times since 1989, so we’re on the high end of the fishery.”

Other sac roe fisheries in Southeast include Seymour Canal, Hobart, Houghton, Kah Shakes and Ketchikan. “Sitka is the premier herring stock of Southeast Alaska,” said Gordon. “It is typically much larger than the other stocks.”  The threshold for Sitka Sound has to be at least 20,000 tons to have a fishery. “At 20,000 tons we harvest 10% percent of the biomass,” said Gordon.