From the air, ADF&G measured 63 miles of cumulative spawn in Sitka. Two years ago, the ADF&G measured 84 miles. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Cut open any fish from Southeast Alaska and you’re likely to find herring in its belly. Herring are a forage fish: silver, fatty and loaded with roe. Those eggs are harvested every spring by fisherman and subsistence users, who ship eggs all over the state. But as the Board of Fish prepares to discuss finish proposals in January 2018, a decades old debate is gaining traction over the stability of Sitka’s herring population.

Downloadable audio.

(Sound of herring being dished on a plate)

At a potluck in April, organized by Sitka Tribe of Alaska, the star of the show is herring eggs. Some herring fans dunk their eggs in seal oil, while others mix them with mayonnaise.

Zoe Trafton piles her plate with herring eggs at Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s annual potluck, celebrating the cultural and ecological importance of the forage fish. STA is calling for the Board of Fish to reduce cap the guideline harvest level for Sitka’s herring at 10%.

For council member Wilber Brown, the secret is a splash of soy sauce. “That first herring eggs of the year, when you bite into it, it just feels amazing!” Brown said, adding “It’s just soul food for us.”

Alaska Native people have been harvesting herring eggs for thousands of years, setting hemlock in the water and pulling the branches up days later, bundled with roe. But this year, a lot of people’s hemlock branches came up bare. In the last fifteen years, harvesters met their annual subsistence needs only three times.

Brown isn’t alone in thinking the worst: that Sitka’s herring population is on the verge of collapse.

“I wasn’t able to send any up to my aunties, up to my family,” Brown said. “It’s scary to think it will be gone.”

Gone, or significantly diminished. That’s happened in Hobart Bay, Seymour Canal, or other places in Southeast that were once major spawn sites. In Sitka, the herring population has only grown – at least that’s what the state’s data shows.

But locals can’t stop talking about how the spawn has changed: how in the 80s and 90s, every nook and cranny of Sitka Sound would turn milky white, the town wrapped in a band of fish fertility.

That’s how Jeff Feldpausch remembers it.

“The entire road system would light up and there would be spawn out there for days. It almost looked tropical,” he said.

These days, some areas once considered a herring egg cookie jar see little to no spawn. That worries Feldpausch, the tribe’s Resource Protection Director.

“It’s been basically one layer of eggs over the needles,” he said. “It’s nothing worth pulling in and bringing to the dock. We think it’s irresponsible to be harvesting at these higher rates — that we need to be more conservative since there’s so much happening in our oceans. We don’t know what those impacts are going to be.”

The Sitka Sac Roe herring fishery happens every spring. The 48-member fleet fished for nearly two weeks this year, catching 14,000 tons – or roughly 20% – of the herring population. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Depending on the size of the herring population that returns to Sitka every spring, the State Board of Fish allows the fleet to catch up to 20 percent. Feldpausch thinks that maximum guideline harvest level is way too high.

Sitka Tribe of Alaska has submitted a proposal to the Board of Fish (STA Proposal 99) to cap the harvest level at 10 percent and another two that would seal off zones exclusively for subsistence (STA Proposal 105, STA Proposal 106). He doesn’t want the state to close the commercial fishery, just manage it more conservatively.

That job is carried out by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) and as far as they’re concerned, the herring are more abundant than ever.

Pilot: Emergency exits on either side. Handles up and back to get out of the airplane.  Emergency life vests are right here.

(Propeller sound)

On Easter morning, fisheries biologist Eric Coonradt with the department is hunting for herring eggs in the front seat of a small plane. He’s clutching a pencil and scanning the water.

Eric Coonradt, Fisheries Biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, tracks spawn mileage on a map. While Sitka’s herring population has grown, the subsistence community has struggled to meet their harvest needs. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

As we careen through the air, he marks on a map all the places where spawn is visible. This aerial spawn data will be used to forecast the size of the population — which has grown in size. Twenty years ago, the biomass was around 50,000 tons. This year, it was over 70,000. For Coonradt, that general upward trend is a sign that the ADF&G management plan is sound.

ADF&G’s Herring Spawn Maps, 1964 – 2017. Herring spawn has changed location dramatically over the last several decades: SS Historic Herring Spawn 1964 to 2017

“This is probably one of the most looked at herring populations,” he said. “At least in Alaska.”

Sherri Dressel is ADF&G’s statewide fisheries scientist. She agrees with Coonradt.

“The whole mission of the department is sustainable management and I really do think that’s at the heart of what we’re trying to do,” she said.

But I still want to know: if the biomass has grown, why are subsistence harvesters not able to meet their needs? Dressel says that’s an unanswered question for the biologists of ADF&G.

“I’m not aware that anyone has a great handle on why that is yet,” she said.

Since there’s no scientific data proving a connection between changes in herring spawn and the commercial fishery, herring management can only change at the will of the Board of Fish. They meet in Sitka in January.

(Potluck chatter again)

At the potluck, Jean Arnold piled her plate high with roe on kelp. She hopes the biologists listen to those who struggled to harvest this year after the departure of the fleet.

“I don’t want to see my great-grandson say, ‘Herring, what is that?,’” she said. “That would not be good.”

Because no creature who hunts for herring eggs, whether it’s with nets, branches or baleen, wants to see a fish so critical to survival disappear.

Fisheries scientist Sherri Dressel reviews the data that shaped this year’s herring forecast in Sitka Sound. “It’s not a perfect world,” she told the 48 permit holders, “But Sitka has the best data set in the Pacific.” (Emily Russell/KCAW)

As seiners converge in Sitka for the annual sac roe herring fishery, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is holding firm on its harvest target of 14,649 tons.

This is despite having fallen short of that target in three of the last five years.

ADF&G managers held a preseason meeting with permit holders and processors to go over the data behind this year’s forecast.

The Sitka Sound Sac Roe Herring fishery goes on 2-hour notice at 8 a.m. Friday March 17.

Juneau-based biologists Kyle Hebert and Sherri Dressel walked their audience through the decades of data that have been compiled for the sac roe fishery.

Hebert talked about egg deposition and age distribution — two key components that go into the forecast model. ADF&G measured 79 nautical miles of spawn in Sitka Sound last year — in two distinct spawning events. Divers swam over 60 transects, measuring the width and density of spawn.

Department biologists also study the condition of the herring at the time of harvest. Hebert suggested that it was a little subjective — he called it “a gross metric” — but the herring in 2016 were in good shape.

“I think what we can take from this is that there are no obvious red flags that there’s a serious problem with food availability, nutrition, or something like that.”

See a related story on tribal opposition to the ADF&G methodology.

But what about problems — or at least changes — in the environment that affect the herring population?

Sherri Dressel is a fisheries scientist and biometrician. She told the room that she basically counts backwards from the trillions of eggs deposited during the spawn to come up with a rough estimate of females, and from there an estimate of males, to begin the process of forecasting biomass.

“So our goal has been to at least over- and under-forecast, so at least it’s balanced. If we had it in a perfect world, we’d be spot on. But that’s not totally possible.”

Dressel said that, despite not always being on target, the department’s forecasts have tracked on a line close to actual abundance.

Over the past few years humpback whales have been overwintering in Sitka Sound, and it’s commonly assumed that they’re feeding on herring.

One permit holder asked if there was a correlation between water temperature, whale populations, and herring biomass.

“In 2012 the water temp’s cold, the biomass is up. Could that be due to whales leaving the area?”

Dressel explained that a natural temperature cycle in the ocean called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation indeed correlated to herring abundance, with warmer water temperatures in the Gulf as high as 4-6 degrees correlated to fewer herring.

But whales, she said, have been on the increase since hunting ended in the 1970s, and the model accounted for their predation, along with everything else out there that feeds on herring.

“In our assessment we don’t account for whales directly, but they’re included in natural mortality, so that when we don’t see fish come back, that includes everything that was eaten by whales and birds.”

The scientific presentation took the better part of an hour. Another permit holder appreciated the efforts of the department to manage the Sitka fishery, and asked if any other fishery was comparably studied.

Dressel said that Canadian biologists had strong expertise in modeling, but Sitka was probably the most comprehensively researched herring fishery anywhere.

“And part of that’s because we can get to the areas. Sitka’s the best because it’s closest to shore, it goes the longest, and we’ve got the most samples. We’ve probably got the best data set in Sitka of anywhere I know of in the Pacific.”

Besides receiving a refresher on the science behind the sac roe fishery, the fleet heard presentations from Alaska wildlife troopers on enforcement, and from the Coast Guard. Steve Ramp, with the Marine Safety Detachment cautioned the participants of the sometimes rough-and-tumble fishery that, due to a mechanical issue with their patrol boat, the Coast Guard would be monitoring activity from unmarked vessels. “You may not see them,” he said, “but they will be there.”

The seiner Infinite Grace pursing up during the third opening in the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery, on Wednesday, March 26, 2014 (KCAW photo/Rachel Waldholz)

The Alaska Board of Fisheries began deliberations on Thursday (2-26-15), the fourth day of their meeting in Sitka.

But when it came to one of the most contentious issues, Sitka Sound herring, the Board voted down all proposals, leaving the status quo intact.

Downloadable audio

The Board faced a series of dueling proposals, with subsistence users — including the Sitka Tribe of Alaska — on one side, and commercial herring seiners on the other.

One proposal from the Sitka Tribe would have cut the harvest level for the commercial fishery, while one from the Southeast Herring Conservation Alliance, an industry group, would have cut the amount necessary for subsistence users. The Sitka Tribe asked to expand the area closed to commercial fishing, while the seiners asked to do away with the closed waters altogether. And while the Tribe proposed banning any fishery until the minimum threshold had been met for five years in a row, the seiners proposed lowering that threshold.

In the end, the Board took a Goldilocks approach. Orville Huntington, of Huslia, spoke for many on the Board when he said he did not want to impose more mandates of any kind on the biologists managing the fishery.

“I’m really reluctant to take the best science we have out there right now and make it more rigid,” Huntington said. “Because what happens is when you restrict science, only bad things come of it.”

That was the theme of the afternoon: Board members repeatedly praised the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery as perhaps the best managed fishery in the state, and said they didn’t want to tie the hands of the Department of Fish and Game.

But Board members did express concerns about recent declines. The forecast for the Sitka Sound herring biomass this spring is the lowest in a decade and it’s not the first below-average year, as Fish & Game’s Sherri Dressel explained.

“It hasn’t been a chronic problem,” Dressel said. “But 2011, 2012 and then 2014 have been lower than they have been for the last ten, fifteen years or so.”

Board member Sue Jeffrey, of Kodiak, asked whether that was cause for concern, or just a normal fluctuation. Dressel said she saw no reason for alarm.

“You know, we definitely take notice any time that it’s low, and we definitely have,” she said. “But at this point, it would be premature to say that this is a pattern that we expect will continue.”

Board member Fritz Johnson, of Dillingham, asked Dressel to address public testimony from subsistence users warning that herring populations are far below historic levels. Dressel said she couldn’t speak to numbers before the Department started tracking the population in the 1960s, and there’s no agreement on how many herring swam in Sitka Sound in the early 20th century. But, she said, she could speak to the present.

“If the Department is the scientific consensus, we do have consensus that the population is not depressed,” she said. “It is, at the moment, twice the size of threshold, so I would not call that depressed.”

Still, Board members said the trend of the last couple years made them reluctant to take any steps to loosen protections.

But they also weren’t willing to tighten restrictions. At its last two meetings on herring, in 2009 and 2012, the Board raised the threshold required for a fishery, and closed some waters to the commercial fleet. Chair Tom Kluberton said those decisions were prompted by worries that current models aren’t great at predicting sudden population declines. But any more restrictions could harm the commercial sac roe fishery.

“I tend to regard the Board’s action as providing a good safety measure,” he said.

Speaking after the vote, Sitka Tribal Council member Harvey Kitka said that though the Tribe’s proposals were voted down, he felt subsistence users had gotten the Board’s attention.

“We tried real hard to convince them that this was really the last viable stock of subsistence herring eggs in Alaska,” Kitka said. “And they need to take a little better care of it.”

The Board was intrigued by a proposal to open a pound fishery in Sitka Sound. In pound fisheries, herring spawn on kelp within a net enclosure. The fish then leave the net, and the kelp with eggs is sold.

Jeffrey said the idea was worth investigating.

“I think it seems like the kind of product that we’re moving toward,” she said. “You know, this all natural, healthy super-food type of product.”

The Board voted to postpone action on that proposal until the statewide meeting in March 2016, and will draft a letter in support of the concept.

The Board of Fish is meeting in Sitka’s Harrigan Centennial Hall through next Tuesday (3-3-15). The meetings are open to the public, and stream live online here.