Petition to Stop Aquaculture Expansion in Herring Habitat
Updated September 22, 2022
On September 21st, 2022, MP for Courtney - Alberni, Gord Johns, voiced the concerns of over 700 people who signed a petition to protect pacific herring to the House of Commons.
The petition, created by the Association for Denman Island Marine Stewards and supported by CHI, asks the government to immediately halt the expansion of shellfish aquaculture in herring spawning and rearing grounds.
The Association for Denman Island Marine Stewards (ADIMS) is allied with CHI in campaigning for a moratorium on the commercial herring fishery and supports a herring restoration plan that includes financial and practical help for fishers to transition away from reliance on this threatened stock. We worry that in the face of overfishing and climate change, this last stock could collapse and not recover, a pattern already seen with collapsed herring stocks up and down the coast.
4 out of 5 herring fisheries have collapsed on the West Coast.
The herring spawning and growing around Denman and Hornby Islands are part of the last remaining major herring stock on Canada's Pacific coast. Once there were five major stocks, now there is one, and it comes here.
On Denman Island, with so much shellfish aquaculture on its shores, herring habitats are threatened as the industry continues to expand and intensify in areas the herring need for spawning and as nursery areas to grow safely after hatching.
In Baynes Sound, a proposed doubling in oyster stock, concentrated in small bays that are also critical nurseries for herring hatchlings, could reduce the planktonic food supply for those tiny herring by as much as 50%. Survival during early life history determines future herring abundance!
In Lambert Channel, along the northeast shore of Denman and north to Cape Lazo in Comox, proposed subtidal geoduck aquaculture tenures would install facilities within vital herring spawning grounds that are the site of 38% of all herring spawning on the coast. This would degrade herring habitat and threaten the survival of the entire stock, as well as the marine ecosystem that relies on herring to feed the larger fish, seals, sea lions, and whales.
The Last Herring Spawn Is Here.
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What We’re Asking For
Part of the problem and one of the things we are asking for in the petition is proper marine planning. Presently, there is no integrated plan and insufficient regulation/enforcement of the conditions of license in critical herring habitat. In Baynes Sound, shellfish tenures already cover about 90% of the shoreline. Intensification plans could result in as high as a 63% increase in cultivated stock and most of this increase would occur in the inner protected bays, which are key herring rearing habitat. These increases in commercial oysters could monopolize the planktonic food supply just when newly hatched herring arrive. The surge in demand could deprive young herring of the nutrition needed during a critical stage of their development.
Regarding intertidal geoduck, the aquaculture facilities will be within herring spawning grounds in Lambert Channel, and unless DFO accepts hectares of plastic netting as spawning substrate, they should never be located here. Notably, the chemicals that make plastics flexible, phthalates, leach out continuously and are endocrine disruptors. This means that the facilities’ flexible plastic netting creates a toxic substrate for developing herring eggs.
“We support the wild geoduck fishery because years of harvesting wild geoduck in this location have not degraded the herring spawning habitat, and the fishery continues to be sustainable and lucrative. However, installing subtidal geoduck aquaculture facilities, involving hectares of net canopies, and intensive use of jet hoses, threatens the integrity of the herring spawning habitat, and should not be licensed.” – Association of Denman Island Marine Stewards
CHI & ADIMS are concerned about herring impacts and the mountains of plastic debris collected annually, but at the crux of this issue is inadequate management of an ecologically and biologically significant area (EBSA) (herring are part of this designation) and an important bird and biodiversity area. It’s craziness that there isn’t any thoughtful planning and ecosystem based management (and studies on herring impacts specifically).
Specific requests in the petition:
1. Postpone licensing any further shellfish aquaculture facilities located in/near herring spawning and rearing habitat in Baynes Sound/Lambert Channel until:
(i) an ecosystem-based assessment is completed on the impacts of this industry’s activities on the herring stock,
(ii) this industry establishes a record of effectively managing its gear and equipment, and pays for the cleanup of the tons of plastic debris it produces annually; and
2. Develop, with First Nations, a co-management plan for Baynes Sound/Lambert Channel that:
(i) is area-based and ecosystem-based,
(ii) respects and recognizes unceded traditional territories and this location’s unique value as an Ecologically and Biologically Significant Area and Important Bird and Biodiversity Area with twenty-one salmon-bearing creeks, and herring spawning and rearing grounds,
(iii) considers other stakeholders.
The e-petition allows MP Lisa Marie Barron, the NDP Fisheries Critic, to bring these issues to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and to the attention of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. We need a minimum of 500 signatures to trigger this action!
Everything we ask for in the petitions is to protect herring at all life stages!