Conservation groups are calling for the immediate closure of the herring fishery in the Strait of Georgia following the release of new federal government data showing a four-year population biomass decline of almost 60 per cent.

“We’ve been systematically overfishing these stocks and the Gulf of Georgia fishery is the last one left,” Pacific Wild co-founder Ian McAllister told The Narwhal.

“Now we’re finding out that it’s already in a state of collapse.”

Herring once spawned en masse in bays and inlets along the B.C. coast, turning waters chalky with eggs and milt in one of nature’s spectacular events.

Today, largely due to overfishing, the only remaining area of spawn is between Qualicum Beach and Comox. 

B.C.’s last great herring fishery

“The entire B.C. fishing fleet is now directing all of its efforts on this one population in the Strait of Georgia,” said McAllister, whose organization has been sounding the alarm bell about herring decline for years.

Herring are a primary food source for endangered Chinook salmon, which in turn comprise 80 per cent of the diet of highly endangered southern resident killer whales. 

“What we can’t understand is why they [the federal government] are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in recovery efforts for both salmon and whales while they’re liquidating their main food supply,” McAllister said.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) data revealed the herring population biomass in the Strait of Georgia dwindled from about 130,000 metric tonnes in 2016 to about 86,000 metric tonnes in 2019. DFO predicts the population biomass will drop to just 54,200 tonnes in 2020. 

The new data also discloses that the returning herring population will consist of smaller and younger fish with lower reproductive capacity.

Herring fishing boats in the Strait of Georgia. Photo: Pacific Wild

Last year’s herring quota was about 21,000 tonnes, noted McAllister.

“People don’t really understand how much fish is taken out,” he said. “That’s the equivalent in weight of the largest class of B.C. ferry, full of fuel, oil and cars. That’s how much fish is taken out of the Strait of Georgia in just a one-week period.” 

The seine and gill net fishery, which begins at the end of February or early March, usually lasts one week to 10 days. 

Herring, a silvery fish that typically grow to just over 30 centimetres in length, spawn repeatedly  — unlike salmon, which spawn only once.

“That’s one of the reasons why the fishery is so unsustainable,” McAllister noted. 

“They’re killing the fish and extracting the roe [for sushi] and the rest of it is going to feed farmed salmon, feed lots and garden fertilizer. But the fish never gets to spawn again. It’s hugely unsustainable in that regard.” 

Herring during the 2018 spawning season in British Columbia. Photo: Pacific Wild

McAllister said the new data contrasts sharply with federal Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s assurance earlier this year in the House of Commons that decisions about the commercial herring fishery are based on the “abundance of the stock that exists there” and grounded in science. 

“And then we find out months later that they’ve had to reassess their estimates dramatically and we find out that, even when they didn’t reach their entire quota, they still over-fished the stock.” 

Pacific Wild, along with Conservancy Hornby Island, the Association for Denman Island Marine Stewards and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, is also asking the federal government to create a Pacific herring recovery program for the Strait of Georgia. 

“If we allow them to rebuild, it would have a profound impact on the recovery efforts of wild salmon groundfish, bottom fish, whales, dolphins, so many species that are literally starving right now,” McAllister said.

Grant Scott, chair of Conservancy Hornby Island, said if the herring fishery isn’t closed it “could be a disaster for other species,” whose numbers are already greatly reduced from historic populations.

“This is the time to shut this thing down,” Scott told The Narwhal. “Let it recover.” 

“All the other creatures that live around the whole Gulf of Georgia, the seabirds, the salmon, the cod, the halibut, the humpback whales, everybody out there in the whole ecosystem relies one way or another on herring.” 

Wolves on the B.C. coast feed on herring roe. Photo: Pacific Wild

Female herring can lay up to 10,000 eggs, each the size of a grain of sand. Photo: Pacific Wild

According to the four conservation groups, the herring population in the Strait of Georgia has suffered from years of excessive quotas based on biomass calculated using a post-industrial fishing baseline. 

The 2019 quota was set based on a predicted return of 122,000 tonnes, but the groups say they were told by DFO that fewer than 86,000 tonnes returned.

“Fisheries ended up catching 25 per cent of the population — exceeding the 20 per cent harvest quota once again,” the groups said in a joint press release. 

According to McAllister, B.C. business magnate Jimmy Pattison owns the majority of the herring fishing fleet and the majority of processing facilities.

“So Pattison might lose a few million dollars but I don’t know how much sympathy there would really be for that considering how endangered these whale and salmon populations are.” 

The Pattison-owned Canadian Fishing Company did not return a call by press time.

A herring fishing boat in the Strait of Georgia. Photo: Pacific Wild

McAllister said the groups are meeting with DFO and “imploring them” to pursue a precautionary approach to herring management. They are hopeful DFO will initiate a closure for next year to allow stocks to rebuild, he said.

“There is money that could go to fishers for mitigation and transition out of this industry. It’s simply not sustainable to be harvesting so many tonnes of a foundation fish, of a critically important forage fish.” 

The federal government is expected to release its plan for the herring roe fishery in early December, following consultation with herring industry representatives and some First Nations. 

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Remember that picture of a baby orca flying through the air like she was auditioning for the Broadway musical adaptation of Free Willy?

In 2015 you couldn’t open a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter feed without seeing the image and smiling. This baby orca, initially nicknamed Wiggles, is J-50 — the 50th member to join J-Pod since humans started counting and cataloguing southern resident orcas.

I talked to the photographer, Clint Rivers, just after he took that astonishing shot and he glowed as he shared the day, like he’d witnessed a miracle. This baby had just learned she could fly and she kept leaping — or, to use the boring scientific term for whales defying gravity and our imaginations, “breaching” over and over and over again.

She was Joy. She was Hope. Her photo became the symbol of West Coast whales — especially since this was the famous orca breach birth baby. Elder orcas helped deliver her, using their teeth to assist her mother, Slick (J-16), with the delivery. Slick was 42 at the time — believed to be beyond her reproductive years — so Scarlet truly was a miracle baby.   

The iconic image of infant Scarlet leaping through the air raised awareness of the animals. Photo: Clint Rivers

This whale was the magic that people travel to the West Coast of B.C. and Washington to experience. She was named Scarlet — because of the scars from her delivery. Also, I suspect, because The Avengers were a thing and I’m sure Black Widow seemed like a terrible name for a cute baby whale. Although, in hindsight, that was probably the way to go.

Scarlet was born in Dec. 2014 and kicked off the great baby boom of 2015 — which was (no coincidence) about two years after a banner year for Chinook salmon — the primary diet of the endangered southern residents. That year their numbers climbed to 83.

Now there are new pictures of Scarlet going viral. If you’re not familiar with orca anatomy, she still looks adorable — a perfect baby orca. The problem is she’s not a baby and the three-year-old is the size of a one-year-old. And there’s a depression at the back of her neck.

Scientists call that indentation “peanut head” — which is more proof scientists should never be allowed to name anything that might be shared with civilians. Peanut head sounds adorable, which is not the effect you want for a term that means she’s lost so much weight we can see her skeleton.

One of Scarlet’s pod mates, 20-year-old Tahlequah (J-35) just delivered the first live baby in the southern resident population in three years. Her daughter survived about half-an-hour before dying. She never flew through the air. She was never named by humans, though I know someone suggested calling her “Extinction” and I’ve suggested “Pandora” — since she’s even got government agencies thinking outside the box.

Early deaths for orcas aren’t uncommon, but three years without adding another live member to this population is catastrophic.

While the rest of the world watched Tahlequah grieve, orca experts on the West Coast have also been haunted by Scarlet. In most stories about Tahlequah carrying her daughter’s body there’s a brief mention that another whale is in trouble.

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been following Scarlet around taking breath samples. Her breath and feces contain pathogens — another science word not meant for civilian consumption. It means germs.

Scarlet is starving and she’s sick and she’s sick because she’s starving. She’s lost 20 percent of her mass and as orcas get thinner, they live off their blubber. But the ketogenic diet isn’t a great idea for orcas since their blubber is where they store the generations of toxins we’ve dumped into the water. Orcas burning blubber are feeding off DDT, dioxins and all the other charming poisonous chemicals and plastics that are now primary links in our food chain.

NOAA and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada are looking to “intervene” to save Scarlet by feeding her live salmon and administering antibiotics. The Lummi Nation has live salmon in tanks ready to feed her. Of course, that requires finding J-Pod, who were just spotted again on Tuesday night outside Port Renfrew.      

NOAA has permission from the U.S. government to administer antibiotics and try to feed her. Canada’s department of Fisheries and Oceans announced Thursday morning that they are also cleared to assist Scarlet. But fog and choppy waters may make it difficult to spot Scarlet’s pod — nevermind get close enough to help her. Weather conditions aren’t expected to improve until Sunday.

Scarlet and her mother, J-16, swim together early in her life. Photo: John Durban (NOAA Fisheries), Holly Fearnbach (SR3) and Lance Barrett-Lennard (Vancouver Aquarium) via Flickr

Orca-advocacy organizations that might normally battle anyone looking to interfere with the whales’ lives are offering to help because, even if our governments are turning a blind eye to their environmental commitments, they’re at least finally following the Pottery Barn rule: “You Break It, You Bought It.”

Lynda Mapes, the orca reporter from the Seattle Times, wrote that she’s received private calls from politicians who can’t sleep because Tahlequah’s story is shattering them. Chances are their children and grandchildren are asking what they’re doing to help the whales. So let’s make sure every kid out there knows the flying baby whale they fell in love with is the “other orca” who’s dying.

Let’s make sure Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knows this as he decides whether it’s worth trampling the last of these black and white whales with the white elephant known as Trans Mountain — and as his government decides where to focus the funds being put into assisting the recovery of these iconic orcas.

Let’s take the moment to ask the B.C. government to look at licences for fish farms that have put wild salmon at risk.

Washington Governor, Jay Inslee, just asked his task force to consider breaching the Snake River dam. Here’s his number (360-902-4111). Here’s Senator Patty Murray’s number (206-553-5545). You can also share your thoughts with the task force online. It is accepting comments from Canadians and Ken Balcomb, founder of the Center for Whale Research, is urging us to weigh in.

Yes, there are plenty of things that need to happen to help the orcas, the Chinoook and the ocean that keeps us all alive.

But these whales are almost out of time.  If you think this world is better with the world’s most iconic orcas in it, this is the moment to demand action.

It’s up to us.

What’s the symbol you want for the future of the southern resident orcas — Tahlequah grieving or Scarlet defying gravity?

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“Some people call it the elephant in the room. I like to call it the blue whale in the pool,” scientist Brian Kingzett told a room of naturalists this week. He was talking about the dramatic rise in ocean acidity along the B.C. coast.

As the Oceanside Star reports, Kingzett, field station manager for the Vancouver Island University Centre for Shellfish Research, met the Arrowsmith Naturalists at the Knox United Church to deliver a talk, Climate Change and Ocean Acidification.

“It’s going to sound a little doom and gloom,” he told the room. When it comes to recent discoveries about ocean acidity, Kingzett said he could hardly believe what he was seeing.

Scientists, Kingzett explained, traditionally haven’t spent much time measuring ocean acidity because levels have remained so consistent for nearly 300 million years. Yet when he began sampling water in and around the Strait of Georgia, Kingzett was so surprised by the results he asked fellow researchers along the Pacific Northwest to confirm them.

It was true: the region’s pH levels had dropped from an expected 8.0 to a staggering 7.57. The difference seems moderate, but each 0.1 decrease represents a whopping 25 per cent increase in acidity.

As a biologist and aquaculture expert, Kingzett said those acidity levels are a massive threat to shellfish.

“The water the small, shelled creatures are living in is actually corrosive,” he said. “Scientists aren’t sure where this is going. This is very much an emerging science,” the Oceanside Star quoted him as saying.

Kingzett was also surprised to find such high acidity levels within protected shorelines like Deep Bay on Vancouver Island’s inner coast.

Deep Bay is home to a 5,000-year-old shellfish industry. In February nearby Qualicum Scallops cut 30 per cent of its workforce after 10 million scallops were killed from high acid concentrations.

Kingzett said he expected increased acidity to affect the open ocean before changing the composition of waters in sheltered regions like Deep Bay. But thanks to polluted waters feeding the Fraser River, “some of the most acidic water is in the Strait of Georgia,” he said.

Google map showing Deep Bay in the Strait of Georgia.

Kingzett added that 2014 is projected to be the warmest year on earth since measurements began in 1881, with increasing pressure on the oceans to absorb excess carbon. This “changes the base chemistry of the ocean,” he said.

Increased levels of carbon in the water leads to the formation of carbonic acid that prevents calcium from binding, an essential step in the formation of shells.

Kingzett explained how ocean currents move around the globe like a ribbon, sometime carrying deep ocean water where acids concentrate to surface regions where there is a higher concentration of life.

Ocean currents take up to 40 years to circulate, so even if we were to stop adding carbon to the atmosphere, Kingzett said, acidic concentrate from the ocean’s depths will still continue to move to shore for another four decades.

“We’ve mailed ourselves a package we can’t refuse,” he said. “It’s a global problem that’s coming home and we really don’t know that the effects will be.”

“Everyone says the Earth is fragile. The Earth is not fragile at all. It will shake us off.”

Image Credit: Brian Kingzett via Casom.com

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