Petition to List Lynn Canal Pacific Herring under the Endangered ...

While NMFS and FWS biologists identified the importance of the coastline north of
Juneau to the Lynn Canal Herring population, subsequent construction of roads, dock facilities
and other developments, took their toll on the spawning areas. By the mid-1990s, the herring
had retreated to only a few pristine areas in and around Berners Bay.
In surveys conducted from 1953-1955, Skud (1959), documented major herring spawning
areas throughout Southeast Alaska. Previous surveys in the Atlantic and North Sea indicated
that patterns in distribution of herring schools could be extrapolated from spawning grounds.
Skud (1959) explained:
The prime objective of aerial surveys is to determine the mileage of beach used for
spawning in a given area. The extent of spawn deposition is assumed to indicate size of
spawning population. In addition comparison of annual changes in actual mileage,
changes in areas used for spawning can be studied and may help to determine
environmental requirements for spawning. Aerial surveys also afford a means of
studying timing of spawning activities.
(Skud 1959: 1-2). From three years of flying around Southeast Alaska, Skud (1959)
characterized the regional population structure of Pacific Herring and also documented a much
greater area receiving herring spawn that has occurred in the last three decades. Skud (1959)
compared his work with that of an earlier survey of Pacific Herring in Southeast Alaska
conducted by Rounsefell (1930) for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries.
Spawning has been observed by air on 20 of the 57 spawning beaches listed by
Rounsefell, and 82 new beaches have been located since 1953. Extensive aerial surveys,
rather than an increase in beaches actually used for spawning, probably explain the large
number of new spawning discovered.
(Skud 1959). Thus, the increase in recorded spawning beaches from 1930 to the 1950s was in
fact attributable to the aerial survey methodology and extensive survey effort, not to an increase
in actual spawning areas.
However, Skud (1959) did find that many of the beaches that were reported to receive
herring spawn by Rounsefell (1930), no longer received any herring spawn in the 1954. For
Lynn Canal Herring, Skud (1959) showed that spawning beaches at Idaho Inlet, Mud Bay, Flynn
Cove and Port Frederick no longer received herring spawn (See Figure 5 and Table 1). These
four areas are outside of Lynn Canal in an area known as Icy Strait (See Figure 5 and Table 1).
An aerial survey conducted by the ADFG on May 5, 2005 reported Pacific Herring only
in a small cove south along the coastline outside of Berners Bay.
Lynn Canal: Surveyed last on May 3. Herring were observed inside Bridgett Cove but no
spawn or herring were seen in other areas of Lynn Canal including Berners Bay.
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