The payments don’t go away,” says Kinney.
“Permits can be anywhere, right now, from $190,000 to $250,000 dollars over the last six years. It’s all those things put together that makes a fishing business.” I wouldn’t buy this boat just to fish salmon I wouldn’t buy this boat just to fish herring. But I bought into the Defiant 7 years ago…With that comes a big bill. “Sure I do multiple fisheries in Southeast Alaska. “It’s forced me to change my business,” Peeler says. “So we’re not going to see a lot of the YouTube video highlights,” he laughs, “but we’re still out there to catch what our companies need.”Ĭooperative or competitive, no herring fishery for two years has been a huge strain on the fleet and Peeler and Kinney’s businesses. Are the fishermen working together to do this as efficiently as possible? Yes,” he says. “Is it a co-op in the word that we’ve used co-op before in this fishery? No. Though state biologists consider the fishery ‘competitive,’ groups of fishermen are partnering with specific processors to harvest what they need. Peeler says this year, seiners are working together a little more closely. “We’re not going to harvest something that’s not marketable.” “It’s not that we can’t fish them and we can’t catch them and they’re not there,” he continues. And there is only a window of six to seven days a week–ten days if we’re lucky–that the herring are marketable, that the roe reaches the quality that they are,” he says. “It takes freezers to freeze these things. He says the GHL isn’t the same as a “quota,” and they don’t have the processing capacity to reach that mark. Peeler says the fleet likely won’t catch that much. The large anticipated biomass has led state biologists to set a ‘guideline harvest level” or GHL of over 33,000 tons of herring. Because unlike the other species we fish, if you weren’t out there looking at them through electronics, you wouldn’t know that they’re there,” Kinney says. “We’re doing our best as fishermen to document and take pictures and try to show the public what’s out there. He says the state’s forecast lines up with what he’s seeing out on the water– very large schools of fish, some in deep waters, 50 to 60 fathoms below the surface, made visible with sounding and sonar equipment. But this year, the state is predicting a record-breaking biomass, which they say should be closer to marketable size. The fishery didn’t open last year or the year before, largely because fish have been too young and small for their eggs to be marketable abroad. It’s one of around 20 vessels participating this year. The Sitkan has fished in the Sac Roe Herring Fishery with his family for over two decades, and the Defiant hasn’t missed the fishery since it was built 42 years ago. “When it’s wet it’s pretty heavy, but I would guess that it weighs, oh wet, I would say 8000 pounds or something like that,” says Peeler. Piled high, it’s taller than me and as wide as the boat. We try to pull it in evenly and, like I said, shrink that bowl up or shrink that purse up, until we’re just to the fish and then we bring them on board.”īelow the rigging is a massive black net that will make up the purse when Peeler and his crew of four haul in a set of herring. “So on our boom is the power block,” he points upwards toward the rigging. He’s explaining how the rigging works and why exactly they call it “purse seining.” Justin Peeler is standing on the deck of his boat, the F/V Defiant, moored in Eliason Harbor. KCAW spoke with two commercial fishermen shortly before the fishery opened about the importance of herring to their businesses and lives. Less than half the fleet is fishing this spring, but the seiners who have stuck around have hauled in catches every day over the last week and a half. The Sitka Sound Sac Roe Herring Fishery opened in late March, after a two-year hiatus. Justin Peeler and Matt Kinney stand aboard Peeler’s boat the F/V Defiant in late March, several days before the Sitka Sound Sac Roe Herring Fishery opened.
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