The Salish Sea Herring Crisis

A Guide to Data, Debate, and Engagement for Concerned Citizens

Research compiled January 2026

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Executive Summary

Pacific herring—the small, silvery fish that once turned the waters white with spawn—have declined catastrophically from historical abundance while remaining central to one of British Columbia’s most contentious fisheries management debates. This report examines the data sources, scientific controversies, Indigenous knowledge, ecological connections, and climate considerations surrounding the Salish Sea herring fishery. It provides actionable pathways for understanding, engaging with, and visualizing this issue.

Key findings:

• The Strait of Georgia is the last remaining open herring fishery in BC; four other management areas have collapsed
• DFO manages herring as sustainable based on post-1951 baselines; critics argue this ignores earlier depletion
• Local spawning populations around Victoria have disappeared, with the fishery now concentrated near Hornby/Denman Islands
• Climate change will warm the Salish Sea by approximately 1.5°C by 2095, but herring show thermal plasticity
• Fishing pressure amplifies climate stress—reducing the controllable stressor gives populations headroom to adapt
• Restoration is not futile, but recovery may be to “a new ecological baseline” rather than historical abundance

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Table of Contents

1. Where Herring Data Comes From
2. What the Data Doesn’t Capture
3. The Core Scientific Controversy
4. Indigenous Knowledge and Treaty Rights
5. What Happened to Victoria’s Herring
6. The Food Web: Herring to Salmon to Orcas
7. Climate Change: Is Restoration Futile?
8. The Bioregional Context
9. How to Engage
10. Data Resources for Visualization
11. Sources

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1. Where Herring Data Comes From

Primary Data Collection

DFO remains the primary data collector, operating from the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo. DFO’s Science Branch conducts annual spawn surveys using SCUBA divers who measure egg deposition on kelp and eelgrass along 350-meter baseline transects. This spawn index—a relative measure of egg abundance converted to biomass estimates—forms the backbone of stock assessments dating back to 1951.

The current assessment model, SISCAH (Spatially Integrated Statistical Catch-at-Age Herring Model), was peer-reviewed and implemented in 2024.

Publicly Accessible Data

Dataset	Format	URL
Pacific Herring Spawn Index (1951-2024)	CSV	Open Government Portal
Herring Sections Shapefile	GIS	Open Government Portal
SpawnIndex R Package	R	GitHub

Independent Research Programs

University researchers contribute independent analysis:

• Jake Dingwall (Amanda Bates’ lab at UVic) uses ROVs to assess spawning habitat condition
• Loïc Dallaire (UVic Spectral Remote Sensing Lab, uvicspectral.com) is developing satellite detection of spawning events that DFO surveys may miss—targeting an interactive tracking tool by 2027

First Nations monitoring programs are increasingly significant:

• Songhees Marine Team: Places spawning substrate from Albert Head to Victoria Harbour
• Squamish Nation’s “Search for Slhawt’” program: Tracks Howe Sound spawning
• Tsleil-Waututh Nation: Monitors Burrard Inlet
• Herring Watch (Coastal Collaborative Science): Invites public participation through iNaturalist and Anglers Atlas apps

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2. What the Data Doesn’t Capture

Local Sub-Stock Resolution

The most significant data gap involves local sub-stock resolution. DFO manages Strait of Georgia herring as a single “metastock,” yet genetic and behavioral evidence suggests distinct local populations exist—some resident year-round, others migratory.

The genetically distinct herring that once spawned in Victoria’s Gorge Waterway (last spawning: 1973) exemplify populations lost without ever being formally recognized in assessment frameworks.

Geographic Gaps

• DFO considers areas like Howe Sound “too peripheral for regular monitoring”
• Spawning sites throughout the southern Strait of Georgia have been abandoned since the 1980s with no systematic investigation
• Summer and non-migratory herring populations were recently “rediscovered” after decades of neglect

Ecosystem Integration

The assessment model incorporates environmental indicators implicitly through time-varying natural mortality but does not directly model:

• Predation pressure
• Habitat quality
• Climate effects
• Juvenile herring abundance and distribution (critical prey for juvenile Chinook)

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3. The Core Scientific Controversy

DFO’s Position

DFO maintains that the Strait of Georgia herring fishery is sustainable based on quantitative reference points:

• Current harvest rate: 14% (reduced from 20% in 2022)
• 2025 spawning biomass forecast: 91,051 tonnes
• Stock status: Above both the Limit Reference Point (30% of unfished biomass) and Upper Stock Reference

The Critics’ Case

Critics—including independent scientists, UVic researchers, and First Nations—center their arguments on four interconnected issues:

1. Shifting Baselines

Daniel Pauly of UBC coined the “shifting baselines” concept in 1995 to describe how each generation uses depleted populations as their reference point, treating “miserable leftovers” as normal.

DFO’s baseline begins in 1951—but:

• The Vancouver-area herring fishery had already collapsed by 99% between 1885-1920
• The coast-wide 1960s crash saw harvests exceeding 200,000 tonnes annually reduce spawning biomass to just 15,000 tonnes by 1965
• Archaeological evidence from 171 sites spanning 10,700 years shows herring bones in 99% of assemblages, with abundance far exceeding anything in the modern record

2. Systematic Overestimation

A 2024 Science paper co-authored by UVic’s Dr. Amanda Bates analyzed 230 fisheries globally, including BC herring, finding two-thirds had overestimated fish stocks by an average of 11.5%.

DFO’s own 2018 internal review found its models had been overpredicting Strait of Georgia herring for years.

3. Local Stock Extirpation Masked by Aggregate Data

UBC’s Tony Pitcher documented that “resident stocks were decimated by overfishing, especially by the reduction fishery in the 1960s.”

Pacific Wild lists sub-stocks lost or greatly reduced: Sooke, Victoria, Southern Gulf Islands, Discovery Islands, Campbell River, Sunshine Coast, and Cherry Point.

4. Spatial Contraction

UVic’s Dr. Benjamin Neal observes that “the Southern Salish Sea is basically reduced now to a spawning population around Hornby and Denman Islands.”

A stock that appears healthy by total biomass may be critically vulnerable if concentrated in a single location.

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4. Indigenous Knowledge and Treaty Rights

The Name of the Land

The name Lekwungen—the identity of the Songhees and Esquimalt peoples whose territory includes Victoria—translates to “the land of smoked herring” or “place to smoke herring.”

Archaeological evidence confirms millennia of herring abundance: the place name Teeshoshum, meaning “waters white with herring spawn,” marks an 800-year-old site where herring bones comprise 93% of fish remains.

Traditional Management Practices

Indigenous peoples sustained herring populations for thousands of years through practices including:

• Haida Yahguudang (respect): Collecting roe only three days after spawning to ensure survival
• Heiltsuk spawn-on-kelp: Harvesting roe on giant kelp rather than killing fish
• Herring egg transplantation: Northern groups practiced moving eggs to repopulate declining areas
• Tsleil-Waututh data: Demonstrates 3,000+ years of sustainable harvesting with “no clear changes, no crashing populations, no extinctions”

The W̱SÁNEĆ Declaration

In November 2024, hereditary chiefs from four W̱SÁNEĆ nations (Tsawout, Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tseycum) united for the first time in 40 years to sign a declaration calling for an immediate 20-year moratorium on commercial herring fishing.

Chief Eric Pelkey of Tsawout asked: “How can DFO justify increasing herring harvests while stocks are in steep decline in our territories?”

Treaty Rights

The 1852 Douglas Treaty guaranteed W̱SÁNEĆ peoples the right to fish “as formerly” in their territories. DFO is obligated to consult, but critics argue consultation has been inadequate. Legal challenges are being prepared with support from Ecojustice and Ratcliff LLP.

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5. What Happened to Victoria’s Herring

Lost Spawning Sites

Victoria once had multiple herring spawning sites, now lost:

Location	Last Known Spawn	Historical Evidence
Gorge Waterway	1973	Shell middens dating back 4,000 years; genetically distinct population
Esquimalt Harbour	Sporadic/irregular	Documented Lekwungen fishing camps at “Village Rocks” near Lang Cove
Esquimalt Lagoon	2022 (first since 1950)	Small spawn observed after 72-year absence
Inner Harbour	Unknown	Archaeological evidence of herring processing

The Gorge Waterway population’s unique genome disappeared without formal acknowledgment.

Causes of Local Collapse

The causes mirror broader patterns:

• Urban pollution degraded water quality significantly by the 1940s
• Eelgrass beds were damaged by development and pollution
• The 1960s coast-wide collapse likely extirpated small local stocks
• Loss of spawning memory: When older fish carrying spawning location knowledge were fished out, younger fish never learned where to go

Current Restoration Efforts

• World Fisheries Trust and volunteers hang spawning curtains in the Victoria area since 2020
• Songhees Marine Team places branch sets to encourage herring return to ancestral waters
• Herring Conservation and Restoration Society (savetheherring.org) coordinates efforts

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6. The Food Web: Herring to Salmon to Orcas

The Trophic Cascade

The connection from herring to Southern Resident Killer Whales runs through Chinook salmon:

Herring (forage fish)
    ↓
Chinook Salmon (>60% of adult diet is herring)
    ↓
Southern Resident Killer Whales (75-80% of diet is Chinook)

Studies show herring spawning in March-April account for 96-99% of herring consumed by both adult and juvenile Chinook.

The Orca Crisis

Southern Resident Killer Whales are critically endangered:

• Current population: 73-75 individuals
• Diet composition: >95% salmon, with Chinook comprising ~75-80% when in Salish Sea waters
• Daily requirement: Each whale needs approximately 225 pounds of Chinook daily
• Pregnancy failure: A 2017 PLOS ONE study found up to 69% of detectable SRKW pregnancies failed between 2008-2014, with low Chinook availability identified as the primary cause

The Ecosystem Math

The Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force quantified the broader calculus:

Global forage fish have a direct catch value of $5.6billion\ast \ast buta"supportivevalue"whenleftinthewaterof\ast \ast$11.3 billion.

Forage fish are twice as valuable in the water as in the net at high latitudes. The Task Force recommends cutting catch rates by at least half and maintaining biomass at 30-40% of unexploited levels.

The Irony

Chinook salmon fisheries have been heavily restricted to protect Southern Resident Killer Whales. But herring—the primary food of Chinook—continues to be commercially harvested. The food web logic is inconsistent.

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7. Climate Change: Is Restoration Futile?

This is perhaps the most important question for anyone considering long-term engagement with herring conservation.

Observed and Projected Warming

Historical trends:

A continuous 36-year record shows warming through the entire water column of the Strait of Georgia:

“A warming trend is observed over the period 1970–2005 through the entire water column of the Strait of Georgia, with a depth-averaged value of 0.024°C per year.”

This translates to roughly 0.84°C over that 35-year period, or about 2.4°C per century if the trend continued linearly.

Future projections:

The Salish Sea Model projects:

“Annual mean water temperature inside the Salish Sea is predicted to increase by 1.77°C in the future Y2095 RCP8.5 scenario…”

Herring Thermal Biology

Optimal range:

“Decades of empirical research have demonstrated that the viability of Pacific herring embryos is maximized between 8 and 10°C and quickly declines with increasing temperature.”

But herring are more resilient than that threshold alone suggests:

Recent experiments found:

“Winter-spawning Salish Sea herring retain sufficient thermal plasticity to survive a relatively extreme heatwave event.”

Why It’s Not Futile

1. Fishing Amplifies Climate Stress

“Forage fish population collapses shared a set of common and unique characteristics: high fishing pressure for several years before collapse, a sharp drop in natural population productivity, and a lagged response to reduce fishing pressure.”

Fishing doesn’t just add to climate stress—it multiplies it.

2. The Salish Sea Has Buffering Capacity

“The strong vertical circulation and mixing with the Salish Sea and biogeochemical activity in the inner Salish Sea sub-basins provide a buffering effect.”

3. Herring Can Shift Spawning Timing

“As the ocean gets warmer, the herring spawn timing is going to potentially get a little bit earlier—10 days on average across the entire range.”

4. Genetic Diversity Requires Population Size

Local sub-stocks carry important adaptive variation—but only if they’re allowed to persist.

5. We Can Control Fishing Even If We Can’t Control Climate

Reducing the stressor we can control gives the population headroom to cope with the stressor we can’t.

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8. The Bioregional Context

Two Sides of One Sea

The transboundary Salish Sea reveals starkly different outcomes under different management approaches:

Factor	Strait of Georgia (Canada)	Puget Sound (USA)
Stock structure	Managed as single stock	21 distinct stocks in 3 genetic groups
2024 harvest	~2,100 short tons	74 short tons
Harvest threshold	10-14% of biomass	Closes if >10%
Cherry Point status	N/A (US side)	97% decline, no spawn 2023-2024

No formal transboundary herring management agreement exists despite shared ecosystem dynamics.

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9. How to Engage

Annual IFMP Consultation

The most direct public input mechanism is commenting on DFO’s draft Integrated Fisheries Management Plans:

• Timing: Typically October-November each year
• Duration: 30-day public comment period

Victoria-Based Organizations

Organization	Focus
Pacific Wild	BigLittleFish campaign, letter-writing, volunteers
Herring Conservation and Restoration Society	Dedicated to herring, publishes Herring Journal
Saanich Inlet Protection Society	Moratorium advocacy, IFMP comments
Raincoast Conservation Foundation	Secretariat for Marine Conservation Caucus

Direct Actions

• Attend forums: HELIT TŦE SȽOṈ,ET (Let the Herring Live) events on W̱SÁNEĆ lands
• Support Indigenous-led conservation: Donate to or volunteer with First Nations restoration programs
• Contact elected officials: Federal Fisheries Minister during decision-making periods
• Consumer choices: Seek spawn-on-kelp products (non-lethal harvest)

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10. Data Resources for Visualization

Time Series Data

• DFO Spawn Index CSV (1951-present): Annual biomass estimates by location

Spatial Data

• BCMCA packaged downloads: Herring spawn locations shapefile
• DFO Herring Sections shapefile: Management area boundaries

Real-Time Oceanographic Data

Ocean Networks Canada (UVic-based, headquarters in North Saanich):

• Oceans 3.0 portal: data.oceannetworks.ca
• Data includes: temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, acoustic data from VENUS Observatory in Saanich Inlet
• Artist-in-residence program: Past work includes “Resonant Disintegration” (life-size orca sculpture with projected climate data)

Orca Connection Data

• Orca Behavior Institute: Monthly sightings maps
• OrcaMaster dataset: 82,447 SRKW sightings from 1976-2014

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Conclusion

The Salish Sea herring controversy illuminates fundamental questions about how we value marine ecosystems, whose knowledge counts, and what baselines we use to define “sustainable.” DFO’s position—that current biomass exceeds modern reference points—may be technically accurate while missing the deeper story: herring that once spawned throughout the Salish Sea, including in Victoria’s inner waters, now concentrate in a shrinking geographic range while Indigenous communities who sustained these populations for millennia call for moratorium.

Climate change adds urgency but does not render restoration futile. The key insight is that fishing pressure amplifies climate stress—reducing the controllable stressor gives populations the resilience to cope with the uncontrollable one. Indigenous peoples managed herring sustainably through previous climate shifts over 10,000 years. The question is whether colonial management can learn to do the same.

The data exists. The debate is active. The herring—like the ecosystem they anchor—await our choices.

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Report prepared January 2026.