Fish and Game sets Prince William Sound fall herring quota at 749 tons, citing weak spring spawn

Prince William Sound's fall herring fishery opens Oct. 1 with a quota of 749 tons, roughly 633 tons less than the management plan would have permitted.

The plan gives the fall fishery a fixed share of the season's harvest, 461 tons this year, and lets Fish and Game add up to 80 percent of whatever the spring sac roe fleet left in the water. Eighty percent would have been 1,151 tons. The department took 25 percent, or 288 tons, saying the decision was made "based on the low mile-days of spawn observed in spring 2026." Mile-days count how many miles of shoreline show active spawn, day by day.

The department did not publish a 2026 mile-days figure in any of its six herring announcements this year.

Alaska News added up the department's own published survey data and arrives at 16.7 statute miles for 2026, below the 10-year averages of roughly 20. The same method reproduces the department's published figures for 2022 and 2023. Applied to 2025, it produces 10.5 miles, lower than this year, and in 2025 the department granted the full 80 percent rollover and opened the fall fishery with 1,750 tons. The 2025 calculation draws on 54 mapped spawn segments against 112 this year, so it may be undercounting. Nothing in the record explains the difference in treatment.

Spring itself opened above the plan's threshold. Pre-fishery biomass came in at 28,287 tons against a 22,000-ton minimum. The fleet did not show up for it: about 589 tons came out of a 1,740-ton sac roe quota, which the department had predicted. Surveyors flew 21 times between late March and the end of April and recorded active spawn on eight days. In the pound fishery, where herring spawn onto kelp suspended in enclosures, 13 of 128 permit holders registered and the closed-pound fishery never opened at all.

Two years ago the department closed all Sound herring fisheries through June 2024, citing a biomass resting on a single age class.

Permit holders register with the Cordova office at 907-424-4012 by noon Sept. 24. The season runs to Jan. 31 or until the quota is caught.