DEAR EDITOR:
Every year at this time the herring lay and fertilize their eggs, turning the waters milky white, in what is one of the great sights on the B.C. coast. The concentration of herring ignites a feeding frenzy of birds and mammals. This is on again right now, though you’d hardly know it. There was a time when Snug Cove would be seething with herring, and the roe would hatch into billions more that would become food for birds and rockfish, salmon, seals and sea lions, and these in turn would be food for orcas, dolphins, whales and bears.
The herring spawn, so vital to the entire food chain, is a shadow of what it once was. The great spawns in Squamish and other parts of Howe Sound have all but disappeared. Department of Fisheries and Oceans still allows a herring fishery to take place near Hornby Island, so once again commercial fishing boats are scooping up much of the remaining herring, bringing in a catch worth a mere $16 million, undermining the ecosystem of the Salish Sea and jeopardizing tourism, whale-watching and recreational fishing – industries of vastly greater size. To add insult to injury, the herring roe are exported to Japan where they fetch a modest price and the fish, themselves, are ground into food for farmed salmon and for fertilizer.
There is no reason why the herring stocks cannot be greatly restored, with benefits for the salmon, orcas, and so on, and vast benefits for recreational fishing, whale watching, tourism and, ironically, the commercial fishing industry. Stopping the small herring fishery in B.C. would give so many species a chance to recover and, ironically, increased salmon stocks would ultimately profit the fishing industry far beyond the money they make now.
It’s time to put an end to this short-sightedness. Do join the calls for the end of the herring fishery. A petition can be signed at conservancyhornbyisland.org.
You can outline your concerns in a letter to: Bernadette Jordan, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Minister’s office, 200 Kent St, Station 15N100, Ottawa ON K1A 0E6 or email: [email protected].
Peter Williamson
Director, Bowen Island Conservancy.
