Point Reyes Light - January 27, 2005
Herring season off to a rough start
By Peter Jamison
Two hours after the break of dawn, herring fisherman Aaron Weinzinger eased his boat into the dock at the Marshall Boatworks. The boat had hardly come to rest beside the pier before Weinzinger was hailed by a group of fishermen clustered at the water’s edge.
"Do you have a delivery for us?" called buyer Tim Furlong, standing at the head of the group. To judge by the grim cast of the fisherman’s face, Furlong already knew the answer.
"Sure," Weinzinger called, flinging a single, silver fish toward the shore, where it landed unceremoniously at the feet of the assembled group.
As a herring fisherman, Weinzinger is one of two dozen who ply the waters of Tomales Bay in the winter, when herring enter the bay to spawn. His catch Tuesday morning was a symbol of what Tomales Bay fishermen are calling one of the worst herring seasons in recent memory.
With the season nearing its close, the 11-boat Tomales Bay fleet has netted only 25-tons of herring, an amount far short of the 400-ton quota set this year by the Department of Fish and Game.
"We’ve got 25-tons for the fleet when we should have 25-tons apiece," said Steve Gilmore, who has been fishing herring in Tomales Bay for eight years.
Thirty tons in a season is considered an "average" take for a single boat in a normal year, according to Weinzinger.
"This is pretty dismal," he said, stepping from his boat onto the pier. Weinzinger had been out on the water since 3 a.m., scouring the bay for signs of spawning herring.
The fish can only be caught when they come together in clusters to mate, cannily avoiding fishermen’s nets at all other times. Herring fishermen usually go out in their boats after sunset and in the hours before dawn, since the fish can’t see the nets as well in the dark.
Furlong is a buyer for the Sea K fishery, which exports herring roe to Japan, where it is eaten as a delicacy known as kazunoko. He agreed that with only a few weeks left, the outlook for this season isn’t good.
"There’s just nothing," he said, gazing out over the becalmed surface of Tomales Bay. "They’re probably not going to end up with a very good season this year."
Sex, not numbers
The problem lies less in the numbers of the fish than in their sex life.
In such a lean year for fishermen, it is ironic that the herring population in Tomales Bay is actually booming. Old-timers say there are more fish in the bay this season than they’ve ever seen.
"It’s never been healthier," Furlong said. "There’s been more fish the last couple years than there ever was."
Biologists at Fish and Game attribute the increased population to environmental regulations put in place over the past two decades. Fishermen are limited to a relatively small section of Tomales Bay, stretching from Hog Island in the north to the Tomales Bay Oyster Company in the south. Only one net is allowed for each fishing permit-holder, down from three nets in years past.
But a large population in itself does the fishermen little good. Herring can only be netted when they come together in massive groups to mate, and catching them at the right moment is largely a guessing game.
"It’s a crap shoot," said Randy Huskins, a salmon fisherman who this year is working on a herring boat. "All fishing is, but here it’s especially so."
Because there is no way to predict when the fish will mate, herring fishermen must be vigilant, spending long nights and early mornings on the water in the hope of sighting a spawn. As often as not they come back from an eight-to-10-hour shift empty-handed, and this season bad luck is the norm.
Herring enter the waters of Tomales Bay in early winter, mate, and deposit their eggs on the bay’s eelgrass. Opinions vary widely on exactly what conditions prompt the fish to spawn.
"You talk to 10 different fishermen, you get 10 different theories," Gilmore said. He believes that in former years herring were attracted and induced to spawn by manure runoff from nearby dairies. According to his theory, cow excrement nourishes phyloplankton and other nutrients the herring feed on.
"This is too clean, now!" He complained.
Becky Ota, senior biologist and state herring manager at Fish and Game, offered a different explanation.
"There’s an ideal salinity level," she said. "Fresh water can be a plus, too much can be a detriment."
She was quick to add, however, that such speculations are purely theoretical, and in no way help to predict when the herring will mate.
Weekend ban frustrating
Herring have spawned twice so far, once before the official opening of the season on Dec. 26 and once on Dec. 30, the first Sunday after Christmas. During the first spawn, legal fishing had not yet commenced; during the second, Tomales Bay’s fishermen could do little more than watch from shore, since they were barred from the waters by a state ban on fishing during weekends.
Fishermen are restricted from the water from noon Friday to 5 p.m. Sunday to make way for recreational boaters, under a title 14 regulation that seeks to prevent "conflict of user groups." Many believe that while this rule serves a useful purpose on San Francisco Bay, where droves of weekend jetskis, kayaks and sailboats crowd the water, it doesn’t make sense on Tomales Bay, which sees little use in the winter.
"A lot of guys wish the rule were changed," Gilmore said, gesturing toward the empty bay. "There’s nobody out here."
Ryan Watanabi, field researcher and fishery manager at Tomales Bay for Fish and Game, admitted that the rule might be unfair to the bay’s fishermen.
"Tomales Bay doesn’t really get the use on the weekends that San Francisco Bay does," he said. "You don’t see a lot of traffic on the water, so there isn’t a perceived user conflict."
For the fishermen of Tomales Bay, a single missed spawn can break a season. The 25-tons of herring netted this season were caught in one large spawn on Jan. 10, and during the 2001-02 season, 120-tons were caught over one three-day period in January.
Watanabi said that the majority of fishermen feel they should be allowed to fish on weekends, and that he had noticed mounting discouragement over the past several years as fishermen missed weekend spawns.
On the other hand, Watanabi noted that there was no way of knowing what the effect of lifting the weekend prohibition would be on the herring population.
Such reservations are not limited to Fish and Game officials. Weinzinger noted that some fishermen might not be eager to work seven days a week. Fisherman Garin McCarthy said that lifting the ban might thin the ranks of herring born in Tomales Bay, making for weaker catches in the future.
But in a year like this, when fishermen are struggling to get by, many view such speculations as beside the point. Watanabi conceded that the current health of the herring population, coupled with the small size of the Tomales Bay fleet, coupling San Francisco and Tomales bays together under one set of regulations may not make sense in practice.
"With the status of our population," he said, "I’m not so sure that it would have a negative effect. The impact of the boats just isn’t that great."
To challenge the weekend ban, Tomales Bay fishermen would have to appeal to Fish and Game through Joe Manpua, who represents them at the Fish and Game Directors’ Hearing Advisory Committee. DHAC meets irregularly, and often focuses on issues in the much larger herring fishery of San Francisco Bay. Ota said that no challenge to the weekend ban at Tomales Bay had been brought before DHAC in recent years.
Other pressures
This season’s slim catch hits fishermen particularly hard at a time when fuel prices are up and herring prices down. In the 1970s, herring fetched $2,000 to $3,000 per ton; one fisherman, Justin Lewis, remembered his father making $60,000 over two days during the boom times. In 1996, herring fetched a decade-high $2,000 per ton; that price has fallen in eight years by $1,500. Though the price for herring in 2005 has not yet been set, Furlong estimates that it will be the same as in 2004 – a paltry $500 per ton.
The price of herring actually varies from catch to catch, and is fixed according to the amount of roe in the fish. When a boat brings in a load, buyer Furlong inspects a sample of the catch and determines what percentage of the fish’s body mass is roe. The per-ton price of the fish rises by $50 for each one percent of roe above 10 percent; a catch with 12 percent roe would thus fetch $600 per ton. A large portion of the fish caught this season had a 13 percent roe mass, Furlong said.
One factor in the price crash may be a decline in demand for the fish in Japan. According to Furlong, the younger generation of Japanese have not inherited their elders’ taste for kazunoko.
"The older generation likes to have kazunoko on holidays; the younger generation wants McDonald’s," he said.
Whatever its cause, the low price of herring only adds to the plight of fishermen already beset by high fuel prices. Diesel for their boats costs fishermen $2 a gallon; Weinzinger estimated that he had run through about 600 gallons so far this season. About half the revenue from his cumulative four-ton catch (considered lucky this season) has gone towards fuel.
This year many of the herring fishermen on Tomales Bay have shifted their focus to catching crab, which, while it does not offer the kind of two-day bonanzas that can make herring fishing profitable, it’s a steadier source of income.
Furlong speculated that price may be a factor in this season’s negligible herring catch, since fishermen are less driven when the returns on their work are so small.
"If the fish were worth more, you’d be willing to put more effort out," he said.
In testimony to this season’s disappointment, some fishermen show resigned indifference to herring’s record-low price. Gilmore, who doubles as a crab fisherman, noted that the price of herring doesn’t matter when there are no fish being caught.
"It might as well be $50 a ton," he said. "I was out there last night and didn’t make enough to cover my flashlight batteries."
Cause for hope
Herring fishermen seem to agree that their hopes for the remainder of the season are dim. Although the season does not officially end until Feb. 25, many view the first week of February as the season’s de facto close, since the total fish tonnage has in years past usually been netted by then. McCarthy said that he will call it quits by the middle of February.
Weinzinger, however, remains hopeful. He noted the immense number of herring in the bay.
"It’s bursting," he said, adding that since it’s been several weeks since the last spawn, he anticipates a new one "any day now."
Gilmore also admitted that in this business, your luck can change in an instant.
"It’s like gold mining," he quipped, "you hit one good vein and it’ll pay."