Annual herring annual fishing in British Columbia is underway, but not without controversy.
Critics, including First Nations and Ecologists, call a moratorium on herring harvest.
Fish is one of the foundations of the Salish Sea Food Chain which support other marine fish and mammals.
But where they were once incredibly abundant, decades of commercial fishing reduced their population to a fraction of what it was in the past.
“The herring was found everywhere, they have caused almost all the shores,” said Ian McAlister, with the Pacific Wild conservation group.
During the last winters, he followed herring commercial fishing in the Georgia Strait and thinks that the Canada Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) are making a mistake by approving it this year.
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He is not alone.
“It simply makes sense that the DFO lets that go and lean on the will of commercial herring fishing,” said Tsawout’s hereditary chief Eric Pelkey.
Despite these objections, the MPO approved winter herring fishing and considerably increased the amount of herring that commercial boats can catch.
This winter too, the MPO has made a change of rule which allows a transfer of quotas.
Critics say that this means that practically none of the captured herring will be for human consumption, but will rather end as a raw material for pools of swimming pools, pet food and fertilizers.
“So we take this wild and incredibly important fish from the mouths of the vestiary killers in the mouth of wild salmon … in very low value products.”
In a press release, the MPO said that its Herring 2024-2025 peaches management plan employed “precautionary approaches that support long-term conservation of actions”, with harvest rates based on science evaluated by peers .
“The harvest rates used to fix the total authorized capture limits are based on mature Frai biomass forecasts, leaving juvenile fish and a significant proportion of the adult population available to support ecosystem processes,” he declared.
“The MPO makes management decisions concerning the size and extent of herring fisheries authorized on an annual basis, on the basis of the best available sciences and the knowledge and contributions of the First Nations, the commercial harvesters and others who are gathered thanks to our in -depth and commitment efforts. “”
Critics say that it is not a good enough answer, and that whatever the amount of herring ended up being transformed into pet food and fish better support rather populations of salmon, porpoise and Orca.