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Herring overview
- 2. Alaska Department ofFish and Game For illustration purposes only Tongue Pt. Right Hand Pt. Togiak Bay Asigyukpak (Oosik) Spit Anchor Pt. Cape Rocky Pt. Newenham Kulukak Bay Cape Peirce Hagemeister Nunavachuk Nushagak Bay Kvichak Bay Island Cape Pyrite Pt. Constantine Egegik Bay Togiak Herring Fishing District N Nunavachak Newenham Kulukak Section Section Section 326-40 326-30 326-10 Section 326-12 Pyrite Point Cape Cape Grieg Ugashik Bay Cape Menshikof 0 30 Kilometers Revised 3/07 Figure 1. Togiak Herring District, Bristol Bay.
- 3. 19 fishermen participated Harvest of 269,000 pounds 10-14% roe Fishery lasted from May 14-27
- 5. Unstable markets Difficulty forecasting run timing Low processor participation Japanese high seas herring fleets Poor weather
- 6. Effort, harvest and price jump tremendously Price is $160 per ton Harvest increases to 5.6 million pounds
- 7. 1980 -- 5,200 tons of waste Management by emergency order (1981) Allocation plan formalized (1982) 1981? camps established at Summit Island and Metervik Bay 1983 beach meetings at Summit Island
- 8. The Heyday 301 Peak purse seine participation 1992 1992 Purse seine fleet harvest 20,000 tons in 20 minutes. 30,315 tons harvested in 1994 1995 exvessel value exceeds $16.7 million 1996 -- 461 gillnet vessels participated
- 9. Dedicated helicopter Many extra personnel and regional staff relocate to Summit Island Area restrictions begin 1993
- 10. Fishery managed from field camp Test fishing an integral part of management Other field camps for sampling crews
- 12. Biomass stable Purse seine participation now 23 Gillnet participation 30 Fishing is essentially continuous over the entire district.
- 13. Seine fleets have formed coops and are managed by their processor Gillnet fleet is also limited by processors Managers remained in Dillingham in 2011 Fishing opens when threshold biomass documented
- 14. Harvested herring average 380 grams Quota is 24,000 ST 20% harvest rate Aerial survey primary tool for biomass assessment ASA model used
Editor's Notes
- #2 My name is Tim Sands, I work for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as the commercial fisheries area management biologist. I don’t have a scientific talk but I thought it would be appropriate to talk about the way the local salmon and herring fisheries are managed.
- #5 There was a spawn-on-kelp fishery but the market has gone away mostly because of economic issues in Japan and competition from pounded kelp in other areas. There is some subsistence harvest of spawn on kelp. The commercial market was good for the many Togiak residents that participated in the fishery.
- #9 The Togiak herring fishery is not nearly as old as the Bristol Bay salmon fishery but it is by volume the largest herring fishery in Alaska. It started slowly in 1967, ran off and on at a low level until 1977 and then became a large and lucrative fishery.
- #10 It was that until the late 1990’s and has gradually diminished in value since then. The biomass is still healthy be the market demand is not what it once was. At the peak it was said that the Togiak herring fleet represented the 10th largest city in Alaska but as the value has decreased so has the fleet size.
- #12 As far as management goes we use aerial surveys to document biomass, map spawn deposition and look at effort.
- #13 When the fleet was large and harvesting and processing power was big openings were limited in time and area. Now, fishing is largely regulated by each processing company within the bounds of the overall quota set by the department.
- #15 Togiak herring are bigger than herring in southeast.