Tag Archives: Togiak Sac Roe Herring
No commercial Togiak sac roe herring fishery this spring, after years of a shrinking market
Fish processors have indicated they will not buy Togiak herring this season, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s outlook released March 20. It’s the first time there hasn’t been a commercial fishery there in decades. That means that this spring, over 57,400 tons of herring will go unharvested. But as the market has declined, so has the price for herring. Tim Sands, said they’ve seen an especially sharp decline in interest since the COVID-19 pandemic began three years ago. The size of the commercial fleet in Togiak has shrunk as well. It used to comprise hundreds of vessels. But last year no gill netters fished, and just eight purse seine vessels participated, hauling in less than a quarter of the available harvest. Togiak herring, meanwhile, are doing just fine. >click to read< 13:50
Togiak Sac Roe Herring: Catch the Story Before it’s Gone
My own visual memories of Togiak are not much more than a slate of wide, open grey sky that merged into open grey water. In the early 2000s, I flew out from Homer with a spotter pilot, landed on the beach in the community and then probably took a skiff from the beach to go out to meet my dad’s boat, F/V Agave. At the time, I was certainly not taking notes or paying attention to location details but what I do remember is bleak, grey, bland, flat land. The landscape was nothing like the mountains in south central and south east Alaska, I just recall bleakness. I never had the opportunity to explore the magic features of seeking out glass floats washed from across the Pacific, looking for ivory, exploring the shorelines. I went out to simply fish and retrieve my own juvenile income, not to recall anything else. That was not enough to provide a credible nostalgia of what it was like to fish out there in the peak of the alluring, crazy, chaotic competition combined with a visual recollection of stoic, stark, rural Alaska. By Emilie Springer click here to read the story 14:25
