When the Department of Fish & Game closed all fishing for shrimp in Hoonah Sound in 2020, there were declines across the board in population. But some population declines are more troubling than others.

“The most concerning thing that we saw was that decline in small shrimp,” said Aaron Dupuis, the state biologist who manages shrimp in Hoonah Sound.

Dupuis says the relatively quick disappearance of small shrimp forced him to “pump the brakes” on all subsistence, sport, and commercial harvests in the sound.

Spot prawns have an interesting life history that makes the survival of small shrimp really important.

“The small shrimp are all males, and they transition to female shrimp as they grow older,” said Dupuis. “So when you’re seeing that lack of small male shrimp, that means that if you don’t do something pretty soon, eventually you’re not going to have any large female shrimp in the population.

The term for this is “protandric hermaphrodite.” In many species, having a lot of large, healthy females usually means good things for the population, and the relative absence of males is not necessarily detrimental. Unless the species is a protandric hermaphrodite, then having all those young males is critical to the survival of the population.

Subsistence harvesters will get a crack at Hoonah Sound shrimp beginning May 1. There will be limitations, however. The days of setting a string of pots are over. It’s one pot per permit, and no more than two pots per boat, regardless of how many permit holders are aboard.

Dupuis says caution is warranted, as a similar story – a five-year closure followed by a gradual reopening – unfolded in Tenakee Inlet a few years ago.

“Tenakee looked like it was coming back,” he said, “and then the personal use and commercial fisheries opened up for a year or two, and then the population crashed again. And now everything’s closed in there. So when we start turning the faucet back on, it’s going to be real slow.”

Some old hands at shrimping might not want to make the 50-mile boat ride north from Sitka to Hoonah Sound, but some will. A skewer of large spot prawns on the grill makes a nice complement to salmon and halibut. Word hasn’t been out very long that Hoonah Sound is opening again. Although Dupuis doesn’t expect Hoonah Sound to be “flooded” with effort, he says people will definitely go. “We’ve already had a few calls,” he says.

The Alaska Department of Fish & Game on Friday (1-14-22) announced the largest-ever harvest guideline for the Sitka Sac Roe Herring fishery this spring – over 45,000 tons – but it’s unlikely that the market can accommodate  that many fish.

Aaron Dupuis is the state management biologist for herring in Sitka. Seiners landed only 16,000 tons of herring last year, which was just under half of the harvest guideline. In 2020 and 2019, there were no fisheries at all. Dupuis says that market requirements – as much as biology – have shaped the sac roe fishery in recent years.

“The reason why there wasn’t a fishery in ’19 and ’20, there wasn’t a biomass issue, it was the size of the fish,” Dupuis said. “The size of the fish wasn’t marketable for what they wanted in Japan.”

The total biomass of herring in Sitka Sound (225,820 tons) is actually a little smaller than last year. The high harvest target (45,164 tons, or 20-percent) is the result of a favorable age distribution of fish: Almost 60-percent of this spring’s biomass is expected to be 6-year olds, weighing in at 136 grams – near the sweet spot for herring buyers in Asia.

Still, Dupuis doesn’t see permit holders, processors, and buyers ramping up to harvest the available supply. 

“It’s gonna be attractive,” Dupuis said, “but by the same token, the markets can only handle so much, so it wouldn’t be physically possible for industry to harvest the entire GHL (Guideline Harvest Level) with the infrastructure in place right now.”

The most recent high-water marks for the Sitka Sac Roe fishery were in 2009 and 2010, when the roughly 50 permit holders landed between 15,000 and 18,000 tons of herring, which sold for over $12 million each year. Since then, seiners have had some much bigger harvests, which have sold for far less. In 2018, seiners landed about 3,000 tons (under a GHL of 11,128 tons), which sold for about $1 million.

See ADF&G’s record of Sitka Sac Roe Herring harvests.

Dupuis would say that 2022’s biomass forecast is a peak – were it not for the large number of 3-year olds observed in the Sound last year – the sixth largest “class” of 3-year olds in the department’s history. Those fish are now 4-year-olds, and – at over one-quarter of the overall biomass – they are right behind the 6-year-olds.

“I’m feeling pretty comfortable with what we’re seeing coming in the back to backfill this huge age class,” Dupuis said. “So it’s not going to be a precipitous drop at least from what I’m looking at right now.”

Dupuis says this year’s sac roe fishery will occur at about the same time as the state Board of Fisheries’ Southeast Finfish & Shellfish meeting – originally scheduled for Ketchikan in January, but since postponed until March in  Anchorage. Although there are numerous herring proposals on the board’s agenda, Dupuis doesn’t expect that any regulatory decisions would alter the course of this year’s fishery.

Note: This article was updated on 1-21-22 to correct the size of the 2018 harvest.

Herring was always going to be center stage for the Sitka Fish & Game Advisory Committee during its intense round of meetings this fall, and – even as the group pored over a big stack of other salmon and shellfish proposals – herring was never out of the limelight for long. KCAW took a look back at which herring proposals got the nod from the Sitka AC, before they’re handed to the Alaska Board of Fisheries at its meeting next month in Ketchikan.

It took the Sitka Fish and Game Advisory Committee five long meetings to review 14 herring proposals. And only a few proposals got a thumbs up. In November, the committee approved only one of three proposals from the Sitka Tribe of Alaska (STA). 

And in December, the group began reviewing herring again, starting off with several proposals from the Southeast Herring Conservation Alliance, a group that represents the interests of commercial fishermen. The Alliance was an intervenor in the lawsuit between the Sitka Tribe and the state over the management of the commercial herring fishery. With proposal 159, the group seeks to change a regulation that requires the state provide a reasonable opportunity for subsistence and to consider the quality and quantity of herring spawn on branches when making management decisions about the commercial fishery. The regulation was a central question in the suit against the state. Commercial fisherman Justin Peeler said leaving the regulation as written could jeopardize the future of the fishery.

“This regulation, it was took into court…and maybe it’s time to revise it. Maybe it’s time to bring it on the floor and, and see if we can come up with something better, or what there is,” Peeler said. “I think that is our main intention, to try to get out the misinterpretation of it.”

ADF&G biologist Aaron Dupuis said the state would be neutral on the proposal but said that it would continue to manage the fishery in the same way whether or not it passed. STA resource protection director Jeff Feldpausch said that wasn’t a guarantee, and the regulation needed to stay in place.

This regulation has been in place since 2002. So we’re looking at 19 years that it’s been in place, and it hasn’t shut down a fishery yet,” Feldpausch said. “Also, these court rulings came out in 2020. And the best of my knowledge, we still had a fishery in 2021. So it didn’t shut the fishery down.”

The AC unanimously opposed proposal 159. It also unanimously opposed proposal 160, which seeks to reopen some closed waters to commercial harvest. And it unanimously opposed a measure to require subsistence fishing permits in order to harvest herring roe on branches in the Sitka Sound area. 

While the AC didn’t favor the Alliance’s three proposals, it unanimously supported proposal 162, to increase the possession limit for spawn on kelp harvest. And it voted 11-1 in favor of proposal 163, proposed by Charles Olson, which seeks to establish equal share quotas for seiners in the commercial Sitka Sound Sac Roe fishery. Olson said he’s been seining for 42 years, and believes his proposal would rectify some problems with conservation, management costs, and safety. 

“All of these problems can be fixed by simply creating a fishery that is equally shared by all of the permit holders,” Olson said. “In an equal split fishery, the permit holder can choose when and how he wishes to catch a fish, or can even decide not to catch any fish at all.”

Tension over the management of the fishery is what led the herring meetings to run long, with public comment on most of the proposals, many of which saw opposition from the public. Here’s subsistence harvester and former Tribal Council member Tom Gamble speaking in opposition to proposal 159. 

“I’m going to challenge you in public, each and every one of you on the board tonight, to stand with a spine for the herring. The herring, not the people that fish them, not the people who are fighting them in courts,” Gamble said. “I’m asking tonight for the support of the herring that we’re not ending any fishery. We’re saving it.”

All of these proposals are soon on their way to the Alaska Board of Fisheries for consideration. The board’s two-week long meeting on Southeast finfish and shellfish proposals begins on January 4 in Ketchikan. 

The deadline to submit written comments on any proposal is December 22 at 11:59 p.m.

Read about each southeast herring proposal here

Here’s how the AC Voted on each herring proposal:
Proposal 156: 5-7 opposed
Proposal 157: 3-5 opposed
Proposal 158: 7-6 supports
Proposal 159: Unanimously opposed
Proposal 160: Unanimously opposed
Proposal 161: Unanimously opposed
Proposal 162: Unanimously supports
Proposal 163: 11-1 supports
Proposal 164: 3-10 opposed
Proposal 165: 2-10 opposed
Proposal 166: 8-5 supports
Proposal 167: unanimously opposed
Proposals 168-169- No comment. 

The 2021 Sitka Sound Sac Roe Herring Fishery opened for the sixth time today (4-1-21). 

Estimates for Thursday’s fishery are not yet available but area management biologist Aaron Dupuis says Wednesday’s fishery yielded around 2,100 tons. Seiners have caught around 8,000 tons of the 33,000-ton guideline harvest level since the fishery first opened on Saturday. 

According to a release from ADF&G, fish caught in two test sets on Wednesday averaged between 113 and 116 grams, with around 11 percent mature roe content. 

Aerial surveys from the day didn’t report any observed spawn.  Fish and Game continues to broadcast daily updates on VHF channel 10.

According to police records, 59-year old Terry William Graves was taken into custody in the Fish & Game office on January 29 in “an altered mental state,” and transported to Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center. 

Area Fish & Game biologist Aaron Dupuis says it’s likely that Graves had no beef whatsoever with the department or his victim, and that the alleged assault may have been random. 

He says that often people do come to the office worked up over something, but it’s never resulted in physical aggression.

“We routinely deal with passionate individuals, but most of those folks keep it cordial,” said Dupuis. “This was a first for this level of severity.”

Dupuis says that the incident has prompted office staff to review their internal security. Except for adding a rope barrier between public and office areas, residents should not notice any changes in the way the department handles business.

“I think most of it was a wake-up call for those of us in the office that this kind of thing can happen,” he said. “We just have to be prepared for it a little bit.”

A police spokesperson says assault charges against Terry William Graves have been forwarded to the assistant district attorney.

The first herring of the spring are beginning to arrive in Sitka Sound. Aerial surveys conducted by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game on Thursday (3-19-20) located a small school of herring near Olga Point.

Herring predators, however, are already in place in force. State biologists saw at least 200 sea lions in several large groups near Vitskari Rocks. Closer to town at Bieli Rocks, numerous whales were seen working nearby waters.

Additional whales have been seen between St. Lazaria Island and Vitskari, along with several hundred sea lions on the coast of Biorka Island.

No herring spawn was observed anywhere in the Sound.

The next aerial survey is scheduled for Monday, March 23.

Due to a combination of weak markets in Asia and smaller-than-desired fish, processors have bowed out of the commercial sac roe fishery this season, and no commercial fishing is expected to occur.

Among all the cancellations happening in Sitka lately is one special rite-of-Spring: The state’s annual herring meeting.

The Alaska Department of Fish & Game has cancelled the often enlightening — sometimes bellicose — gathering of fishing crews, biologists, law enforcement, and subsistence harvesters originally scheduled for Monday, March 16.

The reason for the cancellation is the arrival of the COVID-19 coronavirus in Alaska — but the fishery itself has been a no-go for several weeks now.

“It’s unlikely that there will be a commercial herring sac roe fishery this season, due to (lack of) processor interest,” said state management biologist Aaron Dupuis. “We surveyed all the major processors, and anyone who normally participates and there just wasn’t the interest. And most of that was based off the forecast size of the fish, and market conditions overseas.”

Nevertheless, the forecast  for total biomass for herring this year is substantial — over 200,000 tons. Dupuis says the Alaska Department of Fish & Game is going to closely monitor the return of herring to the Sound, as in past years.

“It’s going to be business as usual as far as the assessment, as far as the department is concerned, for Sitka herring,” Dupuis said. “Aerial surveys are scheduled to begin tomorrow (3-14-20) — weather permitting — and that will continue through the end of herring spawning activity.”

Traditionally, Sitka’s harbors are packed with seine boats this time of year, and everyone who’s got a VHF radio is tuned to channel 10 listening to state managers relay results from the day’s test fishing.

The airwaves are going to be a bit quieter this spring.

“We won’t be doing the VHF radio announcements that we’ve done in the past, and we won’t be doing test sets,” said Dupuis. “The only way that we’ll do a test set is if there is, by some chance, valid interest in actual mobilization of herring processors.”

Although the Asian herring market is not excited about the relatively small fish in this year’s biomass — which is dominated by four-year-olds — local predators are already showing interest. Dupuis and some colleagues took an informal cruise around Sitka’s shoreline on Friday, and found some activity on the herring grounds.

“And it looks like whales are starting to come in off of Biele Rocks,” said Dupuis. “We had about 20 whales working the deeper waters out there. So, it seems like it’s starting to happen!”

Dupuis says the Department will publish herring spawn maps for the public on a daily basis — both online and on paper, available at the Sitka ADF&G office. The department’s research vessel, Kestrel, is scheduled to arrive in town on March 19.

It’s the end of the week one, and seiners and tenders remain moored in Sitka’s harbors, on two-hour notice, waiting for conditions to be right for the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery to open.

As of Friday afternoon (3-22-19) ADF&G biologists have seen a lot of herring, but the roe content hasn’t hit the 11 percent maturity mark needed to make the fish marketable. Sac roe is a delicacy primarily sold in Asian markets.

As the week progressed, test sets gathered by the department showed, in most cases, increasing roe maturity. Two test sets on Thursday yielded 10 percent mature roe, up from 7 percent earlier in the week, but the third set yielded 6 percent mature roe with smaller fish.

In a message to KCAW on Friday morning, state biologist Aaron Dupuis said test results were similar to Thursday, with schools of fish from Katlian to Redoubt Bay. Fish they saw in Krestof Sound Thursday moved back into Hayward Straight, and Dupuis said they found schools near the Magoun Islands. Predators were concentrated in that area, near Bieli Rock, where hundreds of sea lions have congregated this week, and in Redoubt Bay.

In a radio update to seiners later in the day, state biologist Eric Coonradt said they’d found a good distribution of fish, and fish in the Bieli Rock area were near the surface and accessible.

But while the department found schools across a wide area, the one test set from Friday showed lower roe maturity and smaller fish than they were looking for to open the fishery. 200 tons of herring were collected near North Bieli Rocks with around 7.8 percent mature roe and an average weight of 83 grams per fish.

ADF&G will continue conducting vessel and aerial surveys each morning, until conditions are right to open the fishery.

Emily Kwong, KCAW Photo

Despite a poor season last spring, the forecast for the 2019 Sitka Sound Sac Roe Herring Fishery is up. Biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish & Game expect a spawning biomass of just over 64,000 tons of herring in Sitka Sound next March, about 9,000 tons greater than was forecast for this year.

That means the state will allow more herring to be taken next year.

In light of this news, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska announced they would take “drastic action” to protect the herring population from their fear of overfishing.

In a press release published Thursday, Dec. 6, Tribal Council Chairman KathyHope Erickson expressed disappointment at the increased harvest levels “despite the fact that the herring, and the future of all fish and other animals that rely on herring as a forage fish, are in a dire situation.”

Sitka Tribe of Alaska did not specify what their action would be or provide additional comment to KCAW.

Fish & Game assistant area management biologist Aaron Dupuis said department dive surveys turned up far more spawn than first thought. Aerial surveys measured only 33 miles of spawn along the shoreline — about half of the  average year. But there was an upside.

“The spawn that we got, the eggs were quite a bit more dense than what we’ve seen in previous years,” Dupis said. “So, while the total mileage was down — and that’s kind of the visible thing that everybody can see is the mileage — the density of the eggs was higher, and the total area offshore, especially on Kruzof Island, was higher than normal.”

The state allows no more than 20-percent of the biomass to be harvested making the 2019 GHL — or “Guideline Harvest Level” — just under 13,000 tons. But the 50-plus permit holders didn’t come anywhere close to their GHL last March, landing less than 3,000 tons in a co-op fishery that never kicked into high gear.

Emily Kwong, KCAW Photo

Seiners located plenty of fish, but they just weren’t big enough. Often a bit of a rodeo, the 2018 Herring Fishery just petered out, Dupuis said.

“A lot of that was due to market conditions,” Dupis said. “The herring that were available to harvest didn’t meet the market conditions. Rather than scrape up a bunch of fish that people didn’t want to buy, we left them in the water.”

Last March, herring seiners were looking for schools of herring containing mature fish weighing an average of at least 125 grams or, in other words, fish which are roughly 6 years old. The 2019 forecast indicates that fish of that weight or larger comprise less than a quarter of the projected biomass.

So, could 2019 also be another relatively slow year for the Sitka Sound Sac Roe Herring Fishery? That depends on the processors and on the size of the fish, Dupis said.

“If it’s like last year and it’s outside the range that they want, I would expect this year to go about the same last year,” he said.

The state typically begins aerial surveys of herring in Sitka Sound in early March. Like last year, the forecast will not be updated with data from winter test fishing.

Herring samples on the dock at the Fishermen’s Quay. Two sample sets were taken today, though the fish were of inadequate size to prosecute a fishery. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Though the Sitka sac roe herring fishery has been on standby since March 20th, they’ve only caught a quarter of the quota. Many boats have left town in a fishery that was non-competitive this year and appears to be petering out. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game will continue to survey for harvestable schools this weekend. Their research vessel, the R/V Kestrel, has returned to Petersburg. 

Downloadable audio.

“This is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. We’re right outside the breakwater. Can everybody hear me north of town and south of town?,” said Assistant Area Management Biologist Aaron Dupuis over Channel 10 at 10:15 a.m. this morning.

Dupuis was out on the water, looking for herring just like everyone else in Sitka Sound. The herring ADF&G has spotted are too small for most processors to buy and the larger class is starting to spawn. That means the window to fish viable herring and harvest roe from the females is rapidly closing.  

“We’re starting to see some spawn in the Siginaka Islands,” Dupuis said over VHF. “It’s just starting to take off in there. Eastern Bay is starting to spread more than what we’ve seen the last couple of days.”

When herring are actively spawning, they turn the water milky white. From the air, ADF&G has measured less than 10 miles of cumulative spawn in the past two weeks. Aerial surveys today saw 1.8 nautical miles of spawn in Eastern Bay and the Siganaka Islands. 

A map of the herring spawn measured by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game today. 1.8 miles were mapped in Eastern Bay and the Siganaka Islands. (ADF&G Map)

That’s the word from the air. From the sea, boats reported schools of varying sizes.

Matt Kinney of the F/V Hukilau described what he saw over VHF this morning. “We ran across a couple of schools, nothing with much volume. Maybe there was one over 120 tons and another maybe 80 and they were just really flighty and hard to stay on top of. We just got a jig into them and they looked like 90 gram fish,” Kinney said.

To put that in perspective, the Sitka Sentinel reported that processors initially said they would only purchase fish over 125-grams in size.

Later this afternoon, two sets were successfully taken between Eastern Point and Beehive Island.

The F/V Valkyrie had a 10-ton set with 8.5% mature row and 104-gram average weight, while the F/V Anduril had a 5 ton set with 7.9% mature row and 84-gram average weight.

A press release issued at 4:16 p.m. said those fish “were of insufficient quality to warrant an opening.”

The next fishery update will be Saturday, March 31st.