Howard Pattinson

In the mid 1990's I was involved in the herring spawn dive surveys, where every 1500 feet along the beach in spawning areas, a diver swam along a lead line starting at 30 ' depth into the beach with a quadrant. Dive records had been kept for 30 years and the DFO managers had some solid evidence to base their herring stock abundance estimates. Unfortunately that method of assesment was dropped for sonar surveys, with no overlap of methods so the new sonar methods could be calibrated. The derby fishing by seine boats was madness, often leading to over harvesting of allowable catch by 25-30%. Now thankfully the over fishing has been replaced by boat quota shares in a slower fishery where-in the catch can be truthfully reported. Still, with prices paid for roe so low, we have to wonder if this is really a fish pellet production fishery for pet food and salmon farms.