The Herring People Book

Description

On The Cover

Pacific herring are an essential component of the marine food web. So, when their populations began to decline in the late 1970s, several other key species, like salmon, that rely on herring as a food source also saw dramatic declines in their populations. Are the herring and salmon declines connected or coincidence?

A group of local volunteers, calling themselves the Squamish Streamkeepers, responded to the crisis by investigating potential reasons for the decline in local herring stocks in Howe Sound, near Squamish, BC, and False Creek, near Vancouver, BC. They discovered that millions of herring eggs were dying on creosote pilings and subsequently wrapped the pilings in a selection of non-toxic materials to try to protect the eggs from the creosote. To their disappointment, the wraps didn’t work, so they had to look at alternative approaches. They spent the next 17 years figuring out how best to protect herring eggs in a variety of compromised environments, adapting their success to each new challenge they encountered.

This book documents the Squamish Streamkeepers’ efforts to help herring in Howe Sound and False Creek and the factors that have led to the decline in herring populations on British Columbia’s coast.