The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has set a harvest limit for this year’s Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery.
In an announcement in mid-December, ADF&G said the guideline harvest level or GHL would be set at just over 35,000 tons. That makes up 15% of the state’s estimated mature herring population.
Area Management Biologist Aaron Dupuis said while the state estimates the herring population decreased by around 6 percent this year, it’s still up from previous years.
“So the trajectory is going down a little bit, but it’s still quite large,” Dupuis said. “We were forecasting 233,000 tons, about, of herring to come back this year for the mature biomass, but it’s still, historically speaking, for our time series, quite high.”
He said this year the average weight of the herring will be higher because the bulk of the population are older, six and eight-year-old fish.
“Because of that, the average weight of the fish is quite a bit higher than what we’re used to. So it’ll come out at about 156 grams, which is on the high side,” Dupuis said.
Typically, the state allows commercial fishermen to harvest up to 20% of the mature herring population, but last year the Alaska Board of Fisheries adopted regulations to change the formula, reducing the harvest level range and increasing the threshold to open the fishery. At the time, ADF&G staff told the Board of Fish they wanted to reduce the harvest level as an extra precaution, until the state could confirm new Canadian research, which suggested a 20% GHL may be too high for herring stocks.
Regardless of where the cap is set, commercial fishermen are unlikely to harvest close to that amount due to poor market conditions. Dupuis said he expects the fishery to look similar to last year’s. With a limited fleet and fewer than three processors participating in 2025, only around 6198 tons were caught of the 35,000 available.
In its announcement in December, ADF&G noted some uncertainty in the state’s herring population forecast this year. Dupuis said projections from one model the state could have used would have lowered the harvest level by several thousand tons. Because the model’s projections were so close to the standard model the state uses, ADF&G take conservative action with the fishery if necessary based on observations on the ground. But Dupuis said if fishery participation is on the low side, it may not matter.
“That’s how I look at it, as a fishery manager. Like, ‘Okay, how much is industry going to take? What their GHL? What’s the difference between the two models? Is that going to impact the fishery?’ and it likely will not,” Dupuis said.
Dupuis said they should be finishing up the final forecast for the season in the next couple of weeks. The commercial herring fishery typically takes place in Sitka in the early spring.
