Herring fishery
The following profile provides the socioeconomic context of the herring fishery in British Columbia. It includes an overview of the commercial sector. This overview is based on data collected from DFO commercial harvest logbooks and sale slips, public reports, and DFO surveys on harvest prices.
Long text version
2023 Economic profile of the pacific herring fishery
Commercial fisheries overview
Pacific Herring has been vital to BC’s commercial fisheries for over 100 years. Licences are party-based, and quotas are distributed across four fisheries: Roe Herring, Spawn-on-Kelp, Food and Bait, and Special Use. All licences are limited entry, except for Special Use, which is open access.
Harvest volumes and values peaked in 2017 but have declined due to smaller TACs and the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite a slight increase in 2023, export values fell due to reduced high-price roe herring exports compared to 2022.
Key metrics for the Herring fishery, all values are from 2023 and in 2023 dollars
- Landed value ($3.7M), increased by 94% since 2022
- Wholesale value ($9.7M), increased by 77% since 2022
- Licence eligibilities* (1,751, with 311 communal commercial licences), increased by 11% since 2022
Annual herring landings and landed value chart
Herring Roe Gillnet
- 2013 - 7.2K KG
- 2014 - 7.4K KG
- 2015 - 4.7K KG
- 2016 - 7.5K KG
- 2017 - 10.6K KG
- 2018 - 10.5K KG
- 2019 - 7.6K KG
- 2020 - 6.4K KG
- 2021 - 7.5K KG
- 2022 - 3.2K KG
- 2023 - 2.6K KG
Herring Roe Seine
- 2013 - 6.8K KG
- 2014 - 7.6K KG
- 2015 - 9.8K KG
- 2016 - 8.6K KG
- 2017 - 9.8K KG
- 2018 - 3.1K KG
- 2019 - 6.5K KG
- 2020 - 1.8K KG
- 2021 - 2.7K KG
- 2022 - 0.7K KG
- 2023 - 2.1K KG
Spawn on Kelp
- 2013 - 0.1K KG
- 2014 - 0.2K KG
- 2015 - 0.1K KG
- 2016 - 0.2K KG
- 2017 - 0.3K KG
- 2018 - 0.2K KG
- 2019 - 0.2K KG
- 2020 - 0.1K KG
- 2021 - 0.2K KG
- 2022 - 0.0K KG
- 2023 - 0.0K KG
Food and Bait
- 2013 - 4.0K KG
- 2014 - 7.4K KG
- 2015 - 5.0K KG
- 2016 - 9.0K KG
- 2017 - 6.5K KG
- 2018 - 2.4K KG
- 2019 - 4.0K KG
- 2020 - 2.5K KG
- 2021 - 2.8K KG
- 2022 - 0.5K KG
- 2023 - 0.8K KG
Special Use
- 2013 - 0.5K KG
- 2014 - 0.6K KG
- 2015 - 0.5K KG
- 2016 - 0.7K KG
- 2017 - 0.5K KG
- 2018 - 0.3K KG
- 2019 - 0.6K KG
- 2020 - 0.5K KG
- 2021 - 0.4K KG
- 2022 - 0.4K KG
- 2023 - 0.6K KG
Total Landed Value (in 2023$)
- 2013 - $10M
- 2014 - $15M
- 2015 - $14M
- 2016 - $21M
- 2017 - $23M
- 2018 - $17M
- 2019 - $18M
- 2020 - $10M
- 2021 - $9M
- 2022 - $2M
- 2023 - $4M
Commercial fishery pacific herring - 2023 landed weight map
- Herring harvest: 6.2 million kilograms in total volume
Exports: Most herring (81%) are shipped frozen. The remaining 19% are either fresh herring or processed herring roe, with herring roe accounting for 74% of the export value. The primary export markets are Japan (63%), China (21%), and the USA (11%)
In 2022, $5.9M in value-added processing and wholesaling was generated by 25 processing plants located primarily in the lower mainland.
The herring fishery directly contributes $2.0M to the provincial economy, with a direct income contribution of $1.3M.
Herring processing accounts for 3% of the total annual average fish processing jobs in BC. Employment capacity is 59 FTE with total processing wages of $2.7 million.
Roe herring has the highest share (75%) of the total herring landed values. Spawn-on-Kelp has the highest prices $37.31/kg among other types of herring fishery products.
Footnotes
- All values are from 2023 compared to 2022 in 2023-dollars by calendar year, unless otherwise specified.
- 2023 data and 2020-2023-dollars values are considered preliminary and are subject to change.
- *Licence eligibilities represents the number of issued licences.
Data
The commercial data that informed this work can be downloaded here.
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