By Tom Morphet
The National Marine Fisheries Service last month rejected a petition to
list Lynn Canal herring as threatened or endangered, but its scientists can’t explain
why stocks have never recovered after plummeting in the early 1980s.
Now, the agency plans to investigate whether the entire herring
population in Southeast should be listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
"We need to look at the entire Southeast Alaska herring population," said acting
administrator Doug Mecum.
NMFS determined Lynn Canal herring wasn’t a distinct population
but part of the Southeast Alaska population, said Kaja Brix, the agency’s director of
protected resources. "We thought it appropriate to look at the unit beyond Lynn
Canal."
The "status review" of Southeast herring will look at the
status of the herring population, trends and potential threats and should be complete in
about a year, Brix said. It will also include a review of State of Alaska data.
According to the state Department of Fish and Game, spawning volumes of
Lynn Canal herring have dropped between 90 and 99 percent since 1971. Commercial fishing
on the canal’s stocks has been closed since 1982.
Ray Staska, a former commercial fisheries biologist in Haines and
Juneau, has kept tabs on herring over the years. He believes there’s a small but
stable spawning population, including a subset that spawns with sporadic strength at Mud
Bay and sometimes enters Portage Cove.
"They’re still there, but at way below historic levels and
the numbers still don’t want to pop back, despite having no pressure on them…
The population around Auke Bay never came back. The question is, why not? It’s a big
puzzle," Staska said.
Staska said healthy populations near Sitka, Seymour Canal and near
Petersburg make a regional listing unlikely. He also doubted the drop in canal herring has
had much effect on the Chilkat king stocks. Although kings feed on herring, food sources
in the open ocean are much more critical to king survival than herring in the canal, he
said.
The Juneau chapter of the Sierra Club brought the petition for listing
the herring in April 2007. Its research says herring spawning beaches have declined about
90 percent in the past 40 years.
According to the group, development of the Kensington mine, an east
Lynn Canal road, and other factors, including changing ocean conditions, and noise and oil
pollution, threaten the biggest remaining spawning areas at Berner’s Bay.
Citing the federal government’s own research, the group said
Berner’s Bay was "critically important" to the continued existence of the
Lynn Canal herring population.
Mike Saunders, president of Lynn Canal Gillnetters, said he saw the
petition as a tactic by the Sierra Club aimed at stopping development of the Kensington
mine. But from conversations he’s had with veteran seine fishermen, he doesn’t
doubt herring numbers have dwindled.
"Off Maab Island was one of the best herring fisheries in
Southeast. At one time, it was huge," Saunders said. He guesses stocks may have been
so over-exploited they’re still recovering. "There was a rape and run philosophy
for so long… It might take 100 years."
Federal listing of herring is unlikely to hurt gillnetters, Saunders
said. "We’re not using gear that in any way impacts herring, but they might have
to run some of the whales off," he joked. Neither his group nor other fishing groups
in the region have weighed in on the petition, he said.
Carmen DeFranco, a former charter skipper who served as chair of the
local advisory committee to the state boards of Fish and Game, said he believes herring
are rebounding.
DeFranco said he didn’t see herring around Haines for 10 years
after moving here in 1983, but he’s seen schools in the boat harbor twice in recent
years. "A school came by (this year) and if I’d had a cast net, I could’ve
had all I needed for the year."
The Sierra Club’s petition also maintains that herring and
eulachon in Lynn Canal "rely on each other’s sheer biomass" to overwhelm
predators during breeding in late spring. "Should Lynn Canal herring go extinct,
eulachon would lose an important partner during the breeding season," it said,
describing the canal’s eulachon population as "much reduced."
Biologist Staska called that correlation "a stretch," saying
the two species return at different times.
Staska believes herring from other parts of Southeast congregate in lower Lynn Canal
later in the summer, saying he’s seen as many as 13 adult humpback whales feeding on
one school of herring near Shelter Island. A whale can eat one ton of herring per day, he
said.
