In the latest video in SeaDoc Society’s series called “Salish Sea Wild,” veterinarian and all-around marine life expert Joe Gaydos goes on a quest to observe herring during their annual spawning ritual — an event Joe calls the Salish Sea’s “most awesome spectacle.”
In this drama, there is a role for nearly all the players in the Salish Sea food web — from plankton that feed tiny fish to killer whales that eat marine mammals. As the story plays out in the Strait of Georgia, commercial fishers harvest herring at the peak of the spawn. These herring are sold overseas, often becoming sushi in Japan.
“This is the only major industrial herring fishery left in the Salish Sea,” Joe says in the video. “Our other herring populations are already too depleted.”
Canadian herring fishers are allowed to take up to 20 percent of the estimated herring run, which has triggered a debate over whether to reduce the quota, change the management system or cease fishing for herring altogether, as outlined in a story by Jolene Rudisuela of the Vancouver Island Free Daily.
A recent story by Randy Shore of the Vancouver Sun describes an ongoing effort by environmentalists to end the herring fishery. Randy raises the prospect of at least setting aside a protected herring reserve, as suggested by Andrew Trites, a marine mammal researcher at the University of British Columbia.
In another “Salish Sea Wild” video, released in October, Joe Gaydos goes out on Puget Sound with Brad Hanson, a federal marine mammal biologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center to collect scat and fish scales left behind by our southern resident orcas. These samples can provide clues about what the killer whales are eating at various times of the year as well other aspects of their well-being.
