Herring Scrap 21

Last scrap, I introduced you to the first herring enumerator of Southeast Alaska, Lawrence Kolloen. I pointed out that his method for assessing area abundance was based on observing fishing patterns 70 miles south of Sitka, and on retrospectively judging the success of each age class (ie 1927, 1928, 1929) of herring at surviving early life; he was doing cohort analysis the best he could. I suggested that based on what we know now, and since we know he had no meaningful numeric basis for the scale he came up with, it seems reasonable to assume that he guessed low, way low, on herring population size.

I’m going to stick with Kolloen for another scrap, as I think he’s been un-accessed as a source of information on Sitka herring for a long time. No better time than the present: I’d like to share two more important gleanings from his desk files in the US Fish & Wildlife Service archives.

In the 1947 leaflet, he talked about the preceding years, rebuilding from the strain of overfishing in the 1930s:

In the above excerpt (Kolloen 1947), Kolloen describes the fisheries closure of 1940 and 1941 as a result of overfishing through 1939, and expresses his belief in a well recovered population by 1946. He also explains that for the first time, and this is important, “the amount which can be taken each year is established through the measurement of abundance and by the determination of the amount that can be safely removed without endangering the future supply.” It sets the modern management precedent for the first time: in order to fish, we first need to enumerate.

With what remains of this scrap, I want to cover two questions emerging from this narrative that can help us make our historic interpretations.

How heavily were Sitka herring being fished as they declined through the 1930’s, and how bad did over-fishing leave things in 1940?

I’ll start with the second question. One of the archive treasures is Kolloen’s field notebook from his time in Sitka during herring spawning season in 1940. By reading it, maybe we can get a sense of what one 1940’s biologist thought of as a pretty bad year for herring. Here are the full contents of the notebook. Below the photos, I’ve transcribed the whole thing, re-ordering the entries so that they are chronological (in the original, there are entries for various dates on various pages); I’ve also laid them out in a story map in case you’d like to see it spatially.

Spawning Reported at Sitka, 1940

April 1
On the outside of Middle Island

Apr. 2
Reported beginning at Kasiana Island. Reported at Cape Burunof

Apr. 3
Observed moderate spawning in a small bay on Kasiana Island.

Also observed small patches of spawning on main shore in vicinity of Old Sitka Rocks. Herring present in Old Sitka harbor but not yet spawning.

Spawning occurred in north side of Jamestown Bay on this date. Moderate deposit on area covering approximately 100 lineal yards of beach.

Apr. 4
Moderate spawning in area of Jamestown Bay bordering on both sides sampled area. On mud flats between Cannon Is & main shore considerable number of herring tangled in eel grass and left high and dry by receding tide.

Spawning on this date on long shallow beach in front of block house.

Louis Burkhart: Lives at Jamestown Bay. Has witnessed spawnings for past ten years. Reports heaviest he has seen for many years. Herring stranded in eel grass on mud flats by his house.

Apr. 6
Observed herring to have spawned all along south shore of Old Sitka Harbor. Moderately heavy spawn.

Also several spots vicinity of Old Sitka Rocks and Halibut Point.

Apparently spawning on beach just north of cannery and in various places from north end of town to Halibut Point.

Apr. 8
Peterson of Cold Storage had reports of spawning on outside down as far as Warm Springs etc.

Apr. 12
Circled Middle Island during low tide of this date. Fairly heavy spawn along many beaches of this island. Also observed spawning on south shore of Crow Island.

Observed that deposit not high on beach in any of the beaches covered. Not subject to great amount of exposure. Considerable spawning below low water.

Mrs. Obrian (born in Sitka) recalls that seven years ago (1933) had comparable egg deposit in vicinity of Sitka.

Apr. 13-14
Reported by Crew of Odin that another school of herring spawned in Jamestown Bay on this date

Apr 14
At Goddard Hot springs. Contacted Mr. Gus Woodrow and old time resident of this area. Caretaker at home.

Mr. Woodrow reported that this year is heaviest spawn since six years ago.
Extends from Dorothy Narrows up to Kaligan Island.
No report on Crawfish inlet but fishermen report no Herring.

Reports of heavy spawning in Islands of Redoubt Bay. Confirmed by Mr. Woodrow of Goddard Hot Springs.

Observations of egg deposit in South Lagoon near Hot Springs hotel:
Spawn heavy through this area, Dorothy Narrows to Caligan Island. Spawn not high on beach – would judge all to be covered by most tides. This area heavily mineralized and springs enter creeks showing presence of sulphur & iron. On entering over the beach rocks show coloration from mineralized water. Spawning especially dense where these small rivulets enter salt water, indicating that Herring favor these spots. On April 14 eggs showed eye spots and embryos very near hatching. Spawning estimated to have occurred first few days in April. Many eggs deposited on rocks and to casual observation appear dead. However large percentage alive where eggs in heavy layer since considerable moisture retained between eggs & rocks. Observed that eggs in eyed condition are very tough and considerable pressure required to burst them. Collapse on drying but still alive.

Apr. 15
Reported that there has been heavy spawning on outside waters of Cape Burunof

(again if you’d like to see it mapped out in a storymap, here it is)

I’ve read a lot of spawning round-ups from the last 50 years. What he describes here sounds… not the best, but… pretty good! That’s especially true if you assume that in 1940 he wasn’t very mobile in his research, had a small budget, didn’t have very many sources, and wasn’t in Sitka for the entire spawning season. With those premises in mind, I flipped through ADF&G’s record of annual spawning ground surveys to see if I could identify any years that might serve as modern comparables. I found three that seemed close enough to make a point: that this notebook suggests that maybe a very bad year then was as good as a good year now.

Here they are: 1992 if you’re a little conservative, 2021 and 2023 if you think (like me) that Kolloen was unaware of various spawning activity along the kruzof shoreline, krestof sound, hayward strait, etc. Ranked by nautical miles of spawn, those comparable-to-1940 years are, respectively, #10, #2, and #7 in ADF&G’s 60-year time series.

I’ve shared how the biologist responsible for monitoring the fishery in 1940 saw things; now I’d like to show you how ADF&G represents 1940 in modern day court cases about herring management and in Board of Fisheries processes1.

So how many herring were there in Sitka in 1940?

That’s right!

Zero!

According to ADF&G, all herring died in the great statistical collapse of 1940, recovering, barely, briefly, thereafter, until the great statistical proliferation of the 1990’s.2

We’re not done with this ridiculous chart, but that’s all we need from it today.

Now I want to look at what insight Kolloen can provide on the magnitude of the fishery in the years that led to the depleted conditions of 1939. A 1943 document helps here:

This distant figure from this distant document (Dahlgren & Kolloen, 1943)3 is the only thing I know of that tries to understand how heavy the fishing pressure was on Sitka-spawning herring in those years. “Barrels” were a common unit of measurement for herring for decades, and equals 250 pounds of herring. Since barrels, the favored unit for Alaska herring is short (or US) tons. 2000 pounds in a short ton. And so in 1929, 87% of 630,000 barrels of herring caught in Southeast Alaska (mostly at Cape Ommaney) were thought to be Sitka-spawning herring. That’s 68,512.5 tons of herring from Sitka. In 1933, 96% of 495,000 barrels of herring came from Sitka: 59,400 tons. In 1937, 74% of 426,000 barrels: 39,405 tons of Sitka herring. In the thirteen years combined (1927-1939), Kolloen figured that 533,000 tons of Sitka herring were taken (consider that the sac roe fishery, from 1979 to present, has taken 393,914 tons). Ludicrous numbers.

What is incredible to me is that the herring population had been so strong and so resilient going into that period of almost unimaginably intense commercial pressure that it emerged in the not-so-bad way that Lawrence Kolloen encountered it in 1940.

Commercial takes like those have never been approached by the sac roe fishery (which exceeded 25,000 tons for the first time in 2022). But it seems like there should be an obvious lesson here: whatever sustainable is, it isn’t what happened in the 1930’s. Everybody recognized that harvests at those levels precipitated a decline. There’s every reason to think that herring population was more resilient than this one. There’s no evidence for the idea that the herring population in 1929 was smaller than the herring population today. And yet for 2024, ADF&G has this 81,246 ton GHL.

Information, meet history.

Peter

1943 3 Usfw Kolloen Dahlgren Outlook For Herring Fishery 19438.25MB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownload

Kolloen Spawning Reported At Sitka 194010.8MB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownload