April 30, 2014 — Kodiak's roe herring fishery began on April 15 with little notice and rumors of fire sale prices. The fleet of 22 seiners was smaller than normal; they are competing for a harvest of 5,800 short tons, similar to the past five years. No gillnetters had signed up for the herring fishery.
Test fisheries on the east side of the island were showing nice roe counts, said James Jackson, herring manager for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Kodiak.
"We are fishing a predominantly older age class of mostly nine-year-olds, and it looks like we are hitting those fish right now. They are about 250 to 300 gram fish with 12.5 percent roe counts, so it looks pretty good," he said.
The female herring are valued in Japan for the amount of roe (eggs) they contain as a percent of body weight. As much as 90 percent of the males and female carcasses are mostly just ground up and dumped.
Talk of an advance price of $150 to $200 dollars was the word on the Kodiak docks, down by half from last year. Virtually all of Alaska's herring roe goes to a single market, Japan, where hefty supplies reportedly remain in warehouse freezers.
Meanwhile, Alaska's largest herring fishery at Togiak was poised to take off any day with a harvest of nearly 28,000 tons. With the market in a slump and prices in the pits, some were calling for the fishery to remain closed.
"It's not worth going over there," said Robin Samuelson of Dillingham, chair of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Association and a lifelong fisherman. "A lot of fishermen are saying we need to hold our spot in case the price comes up. I personally feel them fish are more important to the ecosystem at $50-$65 a ton than catching them. We need to look at how we can capitalize on that market."
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