Dismal B.C. herring season sparks renewed calls for moratorium

Three days after setting his nets out in the Strait of Georgia between B.C.'s mainland and Vancouver Island, Josh Young headed back home to Pender Harbour. The herring he was expecting to catch were nowhere to be found. 

"I will be honest… the stocks I saw this year weren't the healthiest year I've ever seen," Young said. "We didn't catch our entire quota."

Young wasn't alone. When the season opened March 3 for boats equipped with seine nets, they scooped up their fill of the silver foot-long fish in 48 hours. By the time Young and hundreds of others using gillnets arrived on March 5, the fish seemed to have disappeared. 

Normally, it takes just days for the quota to be filled. But when the season was finally closed on March 28, the total catch was just over 4,000 tons, a little more than half of what the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) had set for a quota.

"It was a different year," Young said stoically.

The result appears to have surprised the department, too. DFO tries to manage the herring stocks using surveillance from the air, sonar soundings and even divers in the water doing surveys. It then co-ordinates the season opening with when the herring arrive to spawn. 

That's because it's the roe that fishermen like Young are after. It's highly prized in the Japanese market. 

After the roe is removed from the females, the fish are ground up for pet food, or feed for fish farms.

Ahead of this most recent season, DFO estimated there were over 70,000 tons of herring in the Strait of Georgia. In the past, the total allowable catch has been set at 20 per cent of the estimate. But because stock assessments over the past few years suggest declining numbers, federal Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray slashed the quota to just 10 per cent.

Commercial fishermen still couldn't fill it.

That startles conservationists like Grant Scott. A former commercial fisherman, he believes the empty nets are a clear sign that Pacific herring are on the verge of collapse.

"It's a disaster," Scott said from his home on Hornby Island. "Not so much for the fisheries, but the whole environment."

Herring are a critical forage fish for larger species like salmon and whales. 

Scott chairs Conservancy Hornby Island, one of a number of groups that have been calling for a moratorium on all commercial herring fishing for several years.