Herring, the last rodeo in town
It’s that time of the year again! Just as daffodils and groundhogs, cherry trees and robins announce the arrival of spring elsewhere, so the sac roe herring fishery spells the end of winter here in Sitka, Alaska. Boats with names like Storm Chaser, Perseverance, Leading Lady, Defiant and Invincible begin to appear from points north and south, often rafting to the tug. The boat in the picture above is the Invincible, fresh out of the boatyard. Just their seine skiff, covered in snow here, probably costs five times what the Adak cost.
Tender and seine crews hold their collective breath – generally in the smoky air of the Pioneer Bar, which was called by a Playboy article in the 1980s the most lucrative drinking establishment in the world during the herring fishery – awaiting the green light from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game to begin netting.
Along with the seiners come the eagles, whale, and sea lions. In this pic here Colorado stands in front of what counts to nine bald eagles – you gotta look real close to see them.
The fishery itself is pretty incredible. ADF&G puts the 48 permit holders on two-hour notice, and tenders and seine boats motor out to grounds in a World War II-type armada. There’s a countdown over the VHF radio from ten. A gun goes off, and the sound of diesel engines echoes off surrounding mountains, a cloud of black smoke rising into the air as seine boats throttle up, rooster tails of water spewing from jet-powered seine skiffs as they race to encircle the fish with nets.
When I first came to Sitka, at the age of nineteen, I remember watching the opening from different spots along the 14 miles of road on the island. Folks would set up picnics on the rocks, or on the roofs of houses, tuning in to VHF channels to hear the skippers curse and yell. A swarm of floatplanes buzzed overhead, searching for schools and reporting back to boats.
Over the years, as the fishery has moved farther and farther afield from town, the Byzantine network of alliances and code-words joining certain boats has grown only more complex. Hulls are regularly rammed, shotguns are brandished, and lives threatened as crews – who have spent all year mending nets, overhauling boats, and working for no pay – vie for the best sets and largest crew-shares. YouTube footage of the fishery proliferates – generally to a background of heavy metal music – as seine boats inflict thousands of dollars of damage to one another. I’ve seen hundred dollar bills tucked beneath urinal cakes at the P-bar – message being, if you need this money, take it – you’re not catching any fish.
The other day I made my way down to Seling Cove, and had coffee with Joe Lindholm, skipper of the Star Shadow. He gave me an education in the fishery, arguing that the cowboy tradition, romantic as it is, has outlived its usefulness. If the 47 other sac roe fishery permit holders pooled shares, insurance rates would go down, catch rates would go up due to lack of competition, and the gear class could work in tandem, instead of competition, he said. A herring consortium of permit holders would also give the fleet a unified voice when it came to setting quota – and defending the economic boom that seiners bring to Sitka.
Still, it’s difficult for anyone to argue against the romanticism of the current fishery, which speaks directly to the spirit of Alaskan individualism, as boats engage in strategic gamesmanship in an effort to take “high catch” of the day. Whether the whole thing is sustainable is another story.
Last year, ADF&G announced that just under 29,000 tons of herring would be available to permit holders for the 2012 fishery – by far the largest quota in the history of Sitka’s sac roe fishery. (In 1976, when the fishery began, the quota in Sitka was 780 tons). To protest the outsized number, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, which represents the Tlingit native community and subsistence rights in Sitka, created the Southeast Alaska Herring Preservation Alliance, and called an emergency “Herring Summit.” Trollers and longliners testified on the decline in abundance and weight of king salmon and halibut – staple Alaskan fish which depend on herring for feed. Absurdly, Alaska is the only state on the west coast that does not classify herring as a “forage fish” – thus denying it protection under the Forage Fish Management Plan. Just this past week the Alaska Board of Fisheries voted against giving herring forage fish status 4-3. Three of the member are industry insiders, and the fourth swing vote was a sport fisherman who brought the measure to the table in the first place. It’s a little disgusting. Especially considering how the 11th law written into the Alaska state constitution was that there would be no commercial herring fishery.
Last March, as the fishery went ahead, boats were able to net only 13,231 tons, falling gravely short of the allotted quota. Even among the seiners – crew and captain were forced to cut across my stern deck on the way to the P-Bar – there were grumblings that we were in danger of fishing out the area. A few boats left town before the fishery closed, the captain’s explaining that they did not want to deplete the resource for 2013. Last year the Kenai salmon fishery crashed, and trollers here in Sitka saw a dismal return of king and coho salmon. Many pointed to starvation as a possible cause – not enough herring. Trollers in Ketchikan have gone so far as to create the Ketchikan Area Herring Action Committee, to protest the fishery.
Call me crazy, but the world does not have a stellar track record when it comes to conservation of natural resources – be it fur, coal, oil, diamonds or trees. Nevertheless, under leadership of folks like Dave Gordon, an area resource biologist for Sitka, Alaska has earned a reputation of maintaining a stable marine ecosystem. Why put this reputation at risk by endangering one of the central building blocks of the entire fishery?
When I bring it up, people scoff at the idea that the Sitka Sound sac roe fishery could crash. In my mind, that’s a bit shortsighted. In 1976, there were seven major spawning areas in Southeast Alaska, along with a number of smaller ones. Starting in the 1980s, there have been collapses in West Behm Canal, Lynn Canal, Auke Bay, Kasaan Bay, Zimonia Strait, Duncan Canal, and others. Today, there are only two major spawning grounds left in Southeast– one off Prince of Wales Island, and the other in Sitka Sound.
The collapse of herring fisheries has followed a worldwide trend. Stocks of the fish, critical for the survival of larger ocean species, have been depleted in Japan, Norway, the Grande Banks of Nova Scotia, Norway and East England. After Washington State’s herring stocks in Puget Sound crashed, British Columbia and Southeast Alaska are among the last remaining major spawning grounds open to fishing in the world.
Tlingit elders speak of days when Sitka Sound boiled silver with herring as far as the eye could see. Oral histories describe catching the fish with rakes, and filling canoes. From the turn of the twentieth century until the early 1960s, millions of tons of the fish were taken in the reduction fishery, causing a crash. The factories were closed, and herring stocks rebuilt themselves – until 1976, when the sac roe fishery started.
In the meantime, Colorado and I hang, doing our thing. Winter is holding on, its fingernails going white. The herring opening should go off, if I had to guess, in the next couple days. There’s no denying it’s fun – it would just be a shame to see it end.
