Herring have continued to spawn near Sitka, signaling that the commercial sac roe herring fishery could soon taper off.
Aaron Dupuis is the area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. In an interview with KCAW on Friday, he said the fishery was in a transition.
we’re kind of, kind of transitioning into spawning mode for the fish. You know, we’ve been, we’ve been following this tremendous biomass of herring coming into the sound for the last two weeks or so, since we’ve been out on the water. And Yeah, normally when they start coming in, we have really good, dense balls, aggregated schools. And then as we get closer to spawning and then into spawning activity, we’ll see those big schools break up, thin out, hit the bottom, get into the shallows, and start spawning.
State managers observed around 18 nautical miles of spawn during aerial surveys today/Friday. Spawn was concentrated from Watson Point to Harbor Point, Kasiana Island, along the causeways, along the eastern side of Kruzof Island, and along the shores of Krestof Island. 22 cumulative miles of spawn have been recorded near Sitka since March 30.
The state did not open the fishery to a commercial harvest today, but they’re not finished yet. Dupuis said typically as spawning kicks off on the north end of the sound, the fishery shifts to the south.
So like the Alukina Bay, Cape Baranof, down to Dorothy narrows is kind of where we’re going to start looking next. But if I learned anything so far with Herring is that they can surprise you, so we’ll kind of be looking everywhere they can show up, where you least expect them.
Around 20 seiners have been participating in this year’s fishery, less than half of the total permit holders, and three processors are participating. The state opened the fishery for this year’s first commercial harvest on March 27. As of April 3, they’d caught over 6000 tons of herring, just a fraction of the 35,000 quota allowed by the state.
