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09/27/2005: "Endangered Marine Species & Habitats Lecture Series"

Wednesday September 28th at 7:00 pm at the Grange in Friday Harbor and Thursday September 29 at 7:00 pm at the Orcas Senior Center in Eastsound
Speaker Fred Felleman will talk about Pickled Herring - the fall of Washington State's once largest herring stock at Cherry Point.

Pickled Herring - the fall of Washington State's once largest herring stock at Cherry Point by Fred Felleman, MSc. NW Director, Ocean Advocates


The State's once largest herring stock in Whatcom County has declined in abundance from 15,000 tons in 1973 to a low of 800 tons in 2000. The 2005 estimate was 1,900 tons. Why should you care?

Herring stocks are named for where they spawn and there are 18 spawning locations throughout the Greater Puget Sound area. San Juan County's population is just 300 tons or approximately 2% of the total current Puget Sound population of 15,000 tons.

Herring's small size and high oil content make them an important source of prey for a wide variety of organisms from salmon to seabirds and marine mammals. There has also been a traditional and commercial fishery for herring in this region although there has not been a fishery on Cherry Point herring since 1997.

Recent efforts to protect this stock for its biodiversity value to the herring in the region by listing them under the Endangered Species Act was denied by the National Marine Fisheries Service. NMFS did not deny that the stock was unique or in peril, only that its disappearance did not matter for there are other herring in the sea. This same logic was used by NMFS in their original refusal to list the Southern Resident killer whales that was legally overturned.

Speaker Biography:
Fred Felleman, MSc. studied the feeding ecology of NW killer whales for his graduate degree from the College of Ocean and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Washington in 1986. He has since worked for several organizations to protect the whales' habitat from a variety of threats especially oil spills.