October 23, 2012 — A recent statement to the California Fish and Game Commission drafted by Audubon California, Earthjustice and Oceana sounded alarms over declining Pacific herring stocks in near shore California waters. The paper also decried declines in two other small marine fishes — anchovies and sardines.
Why such a big fuss over such tiny fish? As well as constituting the basis for idiosyncratic pizzas, sandwiches, and hors d'oeuvres, these three fish are critical forage for a great number of other marine species, including seabirds, whales, seals and sea lions, and valuable food fishes including salmon, lingcod and rockfish.
Herring, in particular, are crucial links in the marine food web. Both the fish and their roe (deposited on kelp and rocks during spawning events) are staples for several species of birds, particularly sea ducks. They are also consumed by the kiloton by marine mammals.
Pacific herring also support a small commercial fishery — the roe is highly esteemed in Japan, and can fetch high prices. The pressure on the fish, apparently, is unsustainable. The paper notes that the stocks are "truncating" in age structure, meaning that older, larger fish — the prime breeders — are getting scarce; that the herring biomass in general is dwindling; and that no effective management plan exists for herring stocks.
Pacific herring don't exist in a vacuum, of course, and their decline bodes ill indeed for California's marine biome: as herring go, so go the myriad species that depend on herring. Clearly, something needs to be done. The signatories to the paper have some ideas, focusing mainly on restricting the state's already beleaguered commercial fishery. This may well be necessary, for the simple fact that it is one of the few things that can be done; options are limited.
It's highly unlikely, however, that limiting the commercial fishery will be enough. Why? Lots of things eat herring, but some things eat way more herring than everything else. I'm speaking specifically of California sea lions. The paper notes that the U.S. population of California sea lions increased 6.5 percent annually from 1983 -2003, and that almost 250,000 of these large pinnipeds are now disporting off the coast of western North America.
California's Central Coast (roughly from Big Sur to Ano Nuevo Island north of Santa Cruz) now supports about 18,000 California sea lions. This population alone consumes 8 to 10 percent of the region's herring biomass. California's coast also supports a robust population of harbor seals — roughly 35,000 of them. They, too, are voracious consumers of herring.
These two species are the piscine equivalent of the elephant in the room that nobody is talking about. Certainly, no researcher or administrator from Audubon, EarthJustice, or Oceana — or any other environmental group — will state the obvious: a truly effective herring management plan would call for local culls of California sea lions, and perhaps harbor seals as well. That's understandable. The idea of killing seals and sea lions for any reason is — from a PR perspective — radioactive.
Read the full story in the Huffington Post