Forage fish: Pacific herring in Alaska

Abstract

Forage fish: Pacific herring in Alaska W. Scott Pegau and Hayley Hoover discuss the plight of forage fish, with a particular emphasis on understanding the lack of recovery of Pacific herring in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Pacific herring (Fig. 1) are food for fish, birds, and marine mammals and are an important subsistence and commercial fisheries resource. They are among the most numerous forage fishes in Prince William Sound, Alaska, yet their population is a small fraction of what it was in the late 1980s. The biomass dropped from around a peak of over 140 metric tons to about 20 metric tons in a few years in the early 1990s (Fig. 2). The drop was most likely the result of a disease outbreak. Since then, the population has remained around 20 metric tons except for a recent decline to about five metric tons.