Herring are valuable fish to commercial fishermen, and in Alaska, herring are mainly harvested for their eggs which are shipped to Japan.
In last week’s post, I wrote about the biology and life history of the Pacific herring, and I explained how important herring are to the diets of many birds, fish, and marine mammals, but herring is also a valuable commodity to humans. For hundreds of years, Alaska native populations have conducted subsistence fisheries for herring. In the spring, villagers from coastal communities harvested herring eggs on kelp or hemlock boughs, and traditional dried herring is still an important resource in Bering Sea villages near Nelson Island where salmon is not readily available.
The commercial herring fishery in Alaska began in 1878 when 30,000 lbs. were caught for human consumption. Early Alaskan settlers preserved herring by salting the fish and storing it in large, wooden barrels. Salted and pickled herring production peaked after WWI when 28 million pounds (12,700 mt) were produced annually.
Reduction fisheries, which are the production of fish oil and fish meal from ground-up fish, began in Southeast Alaska in Chatham Straight in 1882. Reduced herring became more popular in the 1920s, and reduction plants sprang up from Craig to Kodiak in areas with large herring stocks. Harvests during the 1920s and 1930s reached 250 million pounds (113,400 mt) per year, and herring stocks declined in response to this unsustainable harvest. During the 1950s, the low cost of reduced Peruvian anchovies caused the reduction market in Alaska to collapse, and the last herring reduction plant in Alaska closed in 1966.
The Alaska sac roe fishery for herring began in the 1970s when the demand for imported herring eggs in Japan increased after Japan’s herring fishery declined. The sac roe fishery targets female herring just before they spawn. Pre-spawn egg sacs are removed from the female herring and shipped to Asia where they are a highly prized delicacy called kazunoko. Most herring for this fishery are caught by purse seining with a smaller percentage caught by gill netting. Unlike any other fishery in Alaska, managers carefully monitor the quality of the herring during the fishery to obtain the highest-value product possible. Technicians periodically test the condition of the female herring as their eggs ripen, and fishery managers use this information to carefully time the opening of the fishery to within days or even hours before the females are ready to release their eggs. This scrutiny ensures the eggs are ripe and prime for the Japanese market.
Most herring fisheries in Alaska are regulated as management units or regulatory stocks, and these stocks are very specific, often to small geographical areas. While managers might open herring fishing in one bay, the fishery could be closed in an adjacent bay because the herring return to spawn in the second bay the previous year did not meet sustainable levels. The herring sac roe fishery is competitive and intense. Fishery managers often open fishing at noon and close it a few hours later when fishermen have reached the quota for the area. Herring purse seiners work together in groups called combines and hire spotter planes to search for large schools of herring. The purse seine boats stand by near a school of herring until managers declare the fishery open, and then they quickly deploy their nets to scoop up the fish.
Since fishermen are only after the eggs in a sac roe fishery, the carcasses of the females and males caught in the nets are either processed for fishmeal or are sold for bait to commercial and sport anglers. There also is still a smaller food and bait fishery for herring.
In addition to the sac roe fishery, there is another type of commercial harvest for herring eggs called a spawn-on-kelp harvest using floating pens. Herring are caught with purse seines and then confined in floating pens containing kelp. When the herring spawn, the eggs attach to the kelp and are harvested. The eggs from this type of fishery sell for a very high value.
Robin Barefield is the author of three Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter. To download a free copy of one of her novels, watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska.
