Each generation’s sense of normality is shaped by the world they inherit. The danger lies in not realizing what has already been lost.
Melanda Schmid-Ochieng, executive director of Conservancy Hornby Island, speaks of herring spawns the way long-time locals remember them: miles of turquoise water, beaches carpeted in eggs, the smell of rotting roe. People stood along the shore in tall gumboots, knee-deep in eggs. Returning decades later to live year-round on Hornby, Schmid-Ochieng was struck by how much had changed. Conversations with older locals and First Nations people show that what many call a “normal” herring season is a diminished version of what once existed.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada has also forgotten what normal is. Assessing herring using mid-20th-century data as a baseline, after decades of commercial fishing had already heavily impacted them, creates a false sense of sustainability. Like many working in the Salish Sea, Schmid-Ochieng believes baselines should go back at least 100 years to a time when herring were abundant, before commercial fishing and colonial interference.
Despite their small size, herring can live up to fifteen years, and unlike salmon, their survival depends both on learning and instinct. While salmon rely on innate environmental cues and smell to navigate migrations, young herring follow older fish, learning routes and behaviours needed to keep their population alive. Much like humans forgetting what a healthy balanced ecosystem is, herring can lose the “memory” of ancestral spawning grounds when older fish disappear, even if habitats stay healthy. Their decline affects shorebirds, migratory birds, salmon, seals, sea lions, whales, and other species that rely on herring to sustain their own breeding and life cycles.
Indigenous people in the area knew the role of herring in the food chain long before Western science recognized it. They used herring for food and medicine in ways that maintained local ecosystems in balance for millennia. The Douglas Treaty guarantees their rights to continue fishing and hunting as they always have.
The treaty may now be compromised by fisheries policies that have contributed to herring’s decline.
In response, hereditary chief Eric Pelkey of the Tsawout First Nation, along with four other hereditary chiefs in W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council, has taken a first step toward legal action against DFO. With the support of conservation groups, including the Herring Conservation and Restoration Society, Georgia Strait Alliance, and Ecojustice, they are seeking a legal opinion to assess whether DFO’s management violates treaty rights, and if a court challenge could change fishing policies in the Strait of Georgia.
Current practices are harmful. A genuine effort would require stopping commercial fishing until herring populations rebound to pre-industrial levels.
Current practices are harmful. A genuine effort would require stopping commercial fishing until herring populations rebound to pre-industrial levels. Management would also need to recognize each population and spawning site’s uniqueness, rather than treating the Salish Sea as a single biomass. The Hornby-Denman area alone is estimated to have been the spawning ground for nearly 40% of all herring that have ever spawned in the Strait of Georgia, showing the need to protect local habitats from overfishing.
The problem is that fisheries operate year-round. Beyond the spring roe fishery, which targets herring as they migrate to spawn, winter fisheries in the Strait of Georgia go after resident herring populations that live close to their natal waters. These fish end up as bait, aquarium feed, fish meal, livestock and aquaculture feed, fertilizer, and food for human consumption.
Research shows that resident herring are critical for juvenile Chinook salmon, allowing them to grow fast and strong in their first months at sea. When these local populations disappear, predators and coastal communities lose an important resource, and the long-term survival of both Chinook and the species that rely on them is threatened.
To put it in perspective, this year’s Food and Bait and Special Use quota is 2,100 short tons, almost two million kilograms. And the total allowance across all commercial herring fisheries in the Strait of Georgia, is up to 12,787 tonnes, or more than 11 million kg. These numbers show what happens when people become disconnected from the world around them: they take relentlessly, without any regard for the impact on ecosystems and communities they share space with.
Herring can lose the “memory” of ancestral spawning grounds when older fish disappear
This is why community engagement and education remain vital. Conservancy Hornby Island’s annual HerringFest, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this March, is part of that solution. Along with speakers, art displays, and boat tours, Chief Pelkey is sharing his knowledge and bringing people together to remember, through intergenerational and cross-cultural sharing, what makes a healthy spawning season, and to turn that shared memory into collective action for ecological renewal.
Don’t miss HerringFest, a celebration of this keystone species, on Hornby Island, March 4-8, 2026.
Hazel Volk is social media lead at the Watershed Sentinel.
