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

Construction of a seafood processing facility has been proposed for Auke Bay
near Auke Nu Cove. At the time of this study, the facility proposed to discharge
approximately 68,000 kg of seafood waste per year at a depth of 24 m.
A fisheries research facility has been proposed for Favorite Channel at Point
Lena, which is estimated to discharge up to 8.5 million liters per day of seawater
from flow-thru aquaria and 42,000 liters per day of tertiary-treated domestic
wastewater at a depth of 60 m.
A housing subdivision has been proposed south of Point Lena. The first phase of
the proposed South Lena Subdivision consists of 47 residential lots. Individual
sewage treatment systems would connect to a single marine outfall at a depth of
4.3 m and discharge between 114,000 and 303,000 liters of treated domestic
wastewater per day.
(Malecha and Stone 2003). The NMFS study concluded that “[c]urrent data clearly
indicate that Auke Nu Cove is a poor site for discharging seafood waste.” The effect of
these smaller developments is cumulative, but taken together they may cause herring to
move away, reduce productivity or foul spawning areas with pollution.
B. Commercial, Recreational, Scientific, or Educational
Overutilization
1. Historic Overfishing
Herring are heavily exploited by industrial fishing fleets around the world.
Overall, Pacific Herring are much reduced in total abundance, and localized extinctions
of populations, or extirpation, has occurred throughout their range (Pearson et al. 1999).
Hourston (1978) describes the history of fisheries exploitation and population collapses
in British Columbia.
Exploitation of Pacific Herring in Southeast Alaska began during the late 19 th
century and quickly decimated the populations throughout the region (Skud 1963). The
reduction industry, which would catch and boil down millions of tons of Pacific Herring
for oil, took a catastrophic toll on Pacific Herring. While government figures attempt to
estimate the catch in tons from U.S. fishers, foreign fleets’ catches mostly went
unrecorded.
The reduction industry soon depleted Pacific Herring to the point that salmon
fishermen in Alaska began to call for the protection of herring, which is a critical food
source for salmon. Skud (1963) explained that the “contention of salmon trollers that
local herring populations have been seriously depleted by the commercial reduction
fishery” was a significant reason for the studies carried out on Pacific Herring by the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries in the 1950s and 1960s.
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