Local herring used for dog food

[Klob]

Heard from a reliable source at French Creek at least 80 tonnes of herring were unloaded and trucked to Port Hardy to be processed into pet food. This was from only one boat. apparently it has been going on for a while. I did a search and came up with a company called ACANA Pet Foods.
https://acana.com/our-foods/dog-foods/classics/wild-coast/

 

[wildmanyeah]

Heard from a reliable source at French Creek at least 80 tonnes of herring were unloaded and trucked to Port Hardy to be processed into pet food. This was from only one boat. apparently it has been going on for a while. I did a search and came up with a company called ACANA Pet Foods.
https://acana.com/our-foods/dog-foods/classics/wild-coast/

Pretty sure the herring population in the SOG is healthy and stable enough to support a harvest.

 

[Whitebuck]

For dog food? Much like the chum....there can never be too much. Especially with herring finally coming back to a few areas.

 

[agentaqua]

Heard from a reliable source at French Creek at least 80 tonnes of herring were unloaded and trucked to Port Hardy to be processed into pet food. This was from only one boat. apparently it has been going on for a while. I did a search and came up with a company called ACANA Pet Foods.
https://acana.com/our-foods/dog-foods/classics/wild-coast/

I thought it was Marine Harvest that was the processor in Hardy.....

 

[wildmanyeah]

For dog food? Much like the chum....there can never be too much. Especially with herring finally coming back to a few areas.

I agree I don't like the idea of using herring for dog food, especially when there's a lot of other alternatives. Tho fishermen should not put their noise up to all this activity and then expect not to be attacked for their own.

I thought it was Marine Harvest that was the processor in Hardy.....

Says supplied by Keltic seafoods

http://www.kelticseafoods.com/

Marine Harvest is in port hardy too

 

[agentaqua]

...Says supplied by Keltic seafoods http://www.kelticseafoods.com/ Marine Harvest is in port hardy too

Thanks, WMY - forgot about Keltic. Can't be a large supply order, then. Keltic is reasonably small...

 

[Fishmyster]

For dog food? Much like the chum....there can never be too much. Especially with herring finally coming back to a few areas.

There can be too much chum! It is a common belief that salmon carcasses are important fertilizer deposits for streams but in acidified streams like we have here in B.C. the Nitrifying bacteria is not functioning correctly carcasses can do more harm than good. It takes two species of this bacteria to convert the toxic ammonia from decomposition to first nitrite and then the nitrite to nitrate which is less toxic. These bacteria are one of the first building blocks in ecology.

 

[Whitebuck]

Tell me a system that has had too many in fish in it recently? Anywhere close to having those numbers to cause harm.

 

[Fishmyster]

Nope, not recently. I was just selling my agenda towards water quality and ecology. No disrespect intended sorry.
I have seen it's effects before on east VI rivers in the early 1990's. Massive chum runs carcasses didn't flush some years. There were piles of them on the banks where hatchery staff did counts. The ammonia would burn you eyes as you ran past the piles. I could only imagine what the fish and invertes were going thru having to live and breath that river water. Turns out the couldn't. Those rivers acidified badly them years and there was huge piles in every pool until March. In healthy ecology regimes those carcasses would have had nitrifying and micro invertebrates to consume and convert the ammonia but it was lacking. Ammonia is also known to be more toxic in colder temperatures. There were still returning steelhead in those years but soon after that ended as the streams went sterile. I didn't understand what happened back then because local MOE biologists didn't have any answers to share but now I know much better.

 

[Whitebuck]

None taken Kenny, only a couple on this board have your fish/salt experience!

 

[Powerset]

Pretty sure the herring population in the SOG is healthy and stable enough to support a harvest.

I have fished the Campbell River area going on 25 years now and in areas largely full of herring during the summer and early fall was non existent this year. I mean none or next to none in shallow fisheries where they were always visible. The chinooks caught this year off the pier there this year were smaller thinner and most had empty stomachs, that’s an anomaly there. I know it’s a small sample size and probably not much more than an odd year, but I have noticed for 15 years now that our boat fishery has gone from an average of 120-180 feet using steel cable on riggers to an average of 240-325 feet using braid on the riggers. Why?...because the herring we could find was down 200 feet. So obviously environmental conditions play into this, water temperature etc, but it’s something to pay attention to. We saw a noticeable lack of herring this season, smaller chinooks. I know it’s a hot button issue because it’s peoples livelihoods we’re talking about, but I think we need to use taxpayer dollars to pay the commercial fleet in certain areas to stay onshore. Unless we try some innovative things I don’t think our salmon numbers rebound, I think we’re picking it apart little by little until we can’t recover, certainly in some areas. Our government is running up massive deficit’s I think we could use some of that money to keep the commercial guys off the water I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all that way they get a decent wage and we save our fish . You never know until you try, I’m all for trying, at least in some areas, especially in our rivers.

 

[Whole in the Water]

Pretty sure the herring population in the SOG is healthy and stable enough to support a harvest.

Based on what data? Hopefully not DFO's. They manipulate and extrapolate their data to justify commercial harvesting until areas are close to being wiped out. East Coast cod fishery is a classic example.

 

[wildmanyeah]

Based on what data? Hopefully not DFO's. They manipulate and extrapolate their data to justify commercial harvesting until areas are close to being wiped out. East Coast cod fishery is a classic example.

Don't have that area handy - but do have SoG:
View attachment 41475
Current spawning biomass estimated to be at a historic high level, although large uncertainty in recent years.
Survey index in 2017 and 2018 shows a decline from 2016 however this decline is not picked up by the model b/c the model fits an averaged trajectory through the spawn index values of the 2010s.
I.e., there is insufficient information to determine if the decline from 2016 to 2018 represents a decline in spawning biomass.
The model estimates above average recruitment in most years from 2010-2018 with recruitment deviations showing larger recruitment of age-2 fish than expected from the stock-recruitment function.
The increasing trend in estimated spawning biomass since about 2010 coincides with a decline in estimated natural mortality that began in the late 2000s.

Estimated spawning biomass in 2018 is 113,425 t (SB2018, median) or 82.3% of SB0.
SB2018 is greater than the LRP of 0.3SB0 with a 99.6% probability.

 

[Whole in the Water]

Where does this data come from? What is the source?

 

[agentaqua]

Where does this data come from? What is the source?

From the DFO surveys:
Pacific Herring Science Response: 2018 Stock Assessment and 2019 Forecast
Science Response Process – Pacific Region

October 2018
Nanaimo, BC

Evaluation of Management Procedures for Pacific Herring (Clupea pallasii) in the Strait of Georgia and the West Coast of Vancouver Island Management Areas of British Columbia. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Sci. Advis. Rep. In prep.

 

[Whitebuck]

More DFO fake news ********?

 

[Whole in the Water]

Well if the main, or only source of data on herring abundance is from DFO then my fears for declining herring numbers is well founded based upon their ongoing record of incompetence, corruption and mismanagement.

 

[chris73]

There can be too much chum! It is a common belief that salmon carcasses are important fertilizer deposits for streams but in acidified streams like we have here in B.C. the Nitrifying bacteria is not functioning correctly carcasses can do more harm than good. It takes two species of this bacteria to convert the toxic ammonia from decomposition to first nitrite and then the nitrite to nitrate which is less toxic. These bacteria are one of the first building blocks in ecology.

What you need for the first stage of degradation of ammonia (actually mostly ammonium) are oxic conditions for nitrosomonas and then you need anoxic conditions for the second stage for the nitrobacter. I venture to say that anoxic conditions are naturally rare to find in our rivers and therefore the denitrification will remain incomplete with nitrite instead if nitrate. Eventually other oxidization processes will still break the nitrite down back to N2.

You are also not getting the water chemistry just right, you blame acidification for the occurance of fish toxic ammonia when in fact under acidic conditions ammonia does not exist but all in form of harmless ammonium. If the ph goes well above 7 then ammonia takes over and cause issues for fish. At ph 9.5 you would virtually have 100% toxic ammonia and no ammonium. Just to get the facts straight. Back to the herring discussion.

 

[agentaqua]

Well if the main, or only source of data on herring abundance is from DFO then my fears for declining herring numbers is well founded based upon their ongoing record of incompetence, corruption and mismanagement.

Well wrt estimation of herring biomass - DFO faces all the same challenges anyone trying to count fish would encounter besides any lingering administrative dysfunctions.

There are however - assumptions used in the DFO herring stock assessments that are specific to generating herring biomass estimates - especially including their biomass extrapolations using the "Q" quotient; as well as assumptions DFO makes about the metapopulation (subpopulations) structure of herring (that affects how they manage by subarea) - that are arguably the most problematic assumptions that would affect their herring biomass predictions "behind the scenes". Then, there are management triggers (e.g. Limit Reference Points) associated with those different biomass estimates - that can also be argued if they are precautionary or appropriate, or not.

I think though the trends in herring stock biomass should be reliable - but maybe not necessarily the biomass estimates themselves. DFO does also generate standard error estimates for each biomass estimate that should also be used when looking at the biomass estimations.

There has also been some very recent changes wrt methodologies:
1/ DFO has recently "fine-tuned" it's so-termed "AM2 parameterization for 2018", now following Cleary et al. 2018 methodology - and I am not familiar with what that actually means (guessing it has something to do with "Q"), and
2/Dr.s Eleni L. Petrou & Lorenz Hauser from the University of Washington have reanalyzed the herring DNA using new methodologies (see: https://cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3014&context=ssec & http://oceanmodelingforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/13_Hauser-Herring-Summit-Talk.pdf) and found that

• Reproductive timing and geography influence population structure of Pacific herring
• Dispersal distance is limited over moderate geographic scales (100s of km) as well as limited by differences in spawn timing
• Spawn timing drives genetic differentiation in the Salish Sea Unique early and diverse spawning in Salish Sea

I don't see where DFO has yet adjusted their herring management to account for the differences in metapopulations as described by Petrou & Hauser - or if they ever will.

So... In other words - it's very complicated - and I for one - don't pretend to understand all of the process, neither.

 

[california]

So... In other words - it's very complicated - and I for one - don't pretend to understand all of the process, neither.

Nor do I, but I'm pretty sure removing 15-20% of the biomass of forage fish right before they spawn is not a great thing for the ecosystem, particularly for those organisms that depend on the eggs and larvae to grow and survive. They do not remove them uniformly, they are hit hard in certain areas, and since herring are local populations they can be wiped out in one area but still be abundant in others. Howe sound populations are only now beginning to rebound after being wiped out decades ago.