For Pacific herring, another spawning season has come and gone. The eggs have hatched, seabirds have feasted, whales have followed the schools, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has released its preliminary summary of the 2026 Strait of Georgia (SOG) herring season.
At first glance, the numbers appear encouraging. The minimum observed spawn index, a measure of the amount of spawning documented during surveys, increased slightly from 97,903 tonnes in 2025 to 99,088 tonnes in 2026. While the increase is modest (about 1.2%), it marks the second consecutive year of improvement in the SOG following several years of lower spawning activity. But looking at one number alone tells only part of the story.
The 2026 data reveal a population that continues to shift across the SOG, spawning in different places, with changing patterns of egg deposition and varying local abundance. While some traditional spawning areas strengthened, others weakened or disappeared altogether. The season also produced the shortest total spawn extent since 2023, despite recording the highest average egg-layer density in more than a decade. Together, these findings paint a picture of herring concentrating their reproductive effort into fewer places.
Looking beyond the headline number
The most encouraging finding from the 2026 preliminary summary is that overall spawning biomass, as represented by the minimum observed spawn index, remained relatively stable compared with last year. However, several other metrics moved in different directions.
The total length of spawn documented by drive surveys declined substantially, falling from 75 nautical miles (nm) in 2025 to 54 nm in 2026, a reduction of approximately 28%. At the same time, the mean number of egg layers increased from 1.6 to 2.0, while average spawn width remained nearly unchanged. In other words, herring deposited a similar overall amount of spawn, but they did so over a much shorter stretch of coastline, producing thicker layers of eggs rather than expanding into more habitat.
This pattern is important. Pacific herring have evolved to spread spawning across both space and time. Historically, spawning events occurred across hundreds of kilometres of coastline and over several weeks, reducing the risk that storms, predation, or localized environmental conditions would wipe out an entire year’s reproductive effort. A broader distribution also provides food for predators, ranging from surf scoters and grebes to sea lions, salmon and whales, across many different parts of the Salish Sea. When spawning becomes increasingly concentrated, the ecosystem risks losing some of that natural resilience.
The 2026 surveys also documented 48 spawning locations, down from 55 locations in 2025. Several spawning sites that contributed substantially in 2025 were absent in 2026, while other areas experienced notable increases. Rather than indicating expansion, the data suggest that spawning activity shifted geographically across the SOG.
A changing map of spawning
One of the clearest differences between 2025 and 2026 is where herring spawned. In 2025, Section 142, which includes spawning grounds around Cape Lazo, Denman and Hornby islands and Baynes Sound, accounted for approximately 41% of the total observed spawn index, making it by far the largest contributor that year. By 2026, that pattern had shifted dramatically. Section 172, encompassing spawning grounds in and around the Nanaimo area, contributed nearly 36% of the total spawn index, becoming the year’s largest spawning hotspot.
Several Baynes Sound locations that produced large spawn indices in 2025, including Komas Bluff, Whalebone Point and Fillongley Park, either declined substantially or were absent from the 2026 data summaries. Meanwhile, new concentrations emerged around Collishaw Point, Icarus Point, Sunrise Beach and Fraser Point, where individual spawn indices exceeded several thousand tonnes.
For wildlife, these shifts matter. Many predators return to traditional feeding areas expecting predictable pulses of herring spawn. When spawning becomes less consistent spatially, species that have synchronized their migrations or breeding with herring availability may have to travel farther or expend more energy searching for food. While herring have always exhibited natural variability in spawning locations, continued monitoring is essential to determine whether these increasingly pronounced shifts reflect normal ecological dynamics or a response to broader environmental change.
More fish caught, more samples collected—but what does that tell us?
The 2026 season also saw a notable increase in commercial harvest compared with 2025. Total reported landings from the roe seine and roe gillnet fisheries increased from 7,072 tonnes in 2025 to 10,606 tonnes in 2026. Roe seine catch more than doubled, rising from 2,723 tonnes to 5,563 tonnes, while roe gillnet harvest increased from 4,349 tonnes to 5,043 tonnes. Catch from the “Other” category, including the Food and Bait fishery and Special Use fishery, declined slightly from 2,407 tonnes to 2,168 tonnes.
DFO substantially increased biological sampling efforts. Government staff processed 127 biological samples in 2026, compared with 87 samples the previous year, a 46% increase. Commercial sampling increased from 66 to 111 samples, while test fishery samples declined slightly from 20 to 16. This expanded dataset provides greater confidence that the biological summaries accurately reflect the composition of spawning schools in 2026.
Importantly, however, increased harvest and increased sampling should not be mistaken for evidence of a recovering population. They tell us more about fishing activity and data collection than about whether the SOG ecosystem has regained the abundance that once sustained salmon, seabirds, marine mammals, and coastal communities.
What the fish themselves are telling us
The age composition of Pacific herring remained consistent across the last two years. Age-3 fish continued to dominate spawning schools, making up approximately 37 % of sampled fish in 2025 and 36 % in 2026. Age-4 fish accounted for roughly one-third of the population in both years, while older fish, those aged six years and above, represented only a relatively small proportion of sampled fish.
This age distribution is not unexpected. Pacific herring generally begin reaching sexual maturity at age 3, although some individuals do not spawn until ages 4 or 5 and can continue to spawn throughout their lives. While over a third of the herring population assessed are age-3 and age-4 fish indicating successful recruitment into the spawning population, the age structure also highlights the relatively small proportion of older repeat spawners.
Those older fish play an especially important ecological role. Larger, older females generally produce substantially more eggs than younger fish, and their eggs are often larger and contain greater energy reserves. Maintaining a diversity of age classes increases the resilience of herring populations by ensuring that reproduction is not concentrated within only one or two year classes.
Emerging research also suggests that older herring contribute something less tangible, but equally important: collective memory. Herring appear to rely in part on experienced individuals to guide migrations and return to traditional spawning grounds. Older repeat spawners help younger fish locate productive spawning habitat and maintain migration routes that have been passed through generations. When populations lose these older age classes, they may also lose some of this accumulated ecological knowledge, making spawning behaviour less predictable and reducing fidelity to historical spawning locations. Therefore, older repeat spawners provide benefits that extend beyond the number of eggs they produce, contributing to the stability and resilience of spawning behaviour across the SOG.
For a species that underpins the entire Salish Sea food web, rebuilding abundance means more than increasing the total number of fish. It also means restoring the age diversity that supports robust reproduction, buffers populations against environmental change, and helps preserve the ecological knowledge that has guided herring back to these coastlines for generations. Stability is encouraging, but stability at a reduced state is not necessarily recovery.
What observers saw on the water
Some of the most revealing information in DFO’s annual summaries comes not from the tables, but from the observations of First Nations Guardians, local knowledge holders, and DFO field staff working throughout the spawning season.
Several themes emerged consistently across both years. In 2025, Qualicum First Nation observers reported seeing far fewer fish and active spawn than in previous years. They described smaller spawning events, fewer large schools in deep water, and unusual spawning behaviour, including spawning that began at high tide rather than the low tide conditions more commonly observed historically. They also noted that gillnet catches remained relatively small despite the apparent presence of fish around French Creek, suggesting many spawning fish were smaller individuals.
Tla’amin Guardians reported finding no significant spawn within their territory, while Homalco Guardians observed only two small spot spawns in Bute Inlet, much lighter than expected based on previous years. They also noted fewer diving birds and an apparent absence of the large schools typically detected on sounders.
The 2026 observations tell a somewhat different, but equally nuanced, story. Qualicum observers documented heavy spawning activity at several locations, including Collishaw Point, Icarus Point, and Blunden Point, while still reporting only small schools in other traditional areas and scattered fish between several spawning locations. DFO staff similarly noted that, for the second consecutive year, sounding platforms did not locate the large pre-spawning aggregations of fish that have historically characterized the SOG fishery.
Although the overall spawn index remained relatively stable, both years describe a population that was not assembling into the dense, widespread schools that many long-time observers have historically expected before spawning. Instead, fish appeared to be more dispersed before concentrating in localized spawning events. Whether this represents a temporary response to environmental conditions or a longer-term shift in population dynamics remains uncertain. What is clear, however, is that many of the people who spend the most time on the water continue to describe a system that looks very different from what previous generations experienced. Those lived observations deserve to be considered alongside the numerical indicators. They provide valuable ecological context that cannot always be captured by biomass estimates alone.
Are we measuring recovery, or simply accepting decline?
Viewed in isolation, the 2026 data tell a cautiously encouraging story. The observed spawn index increased slightly, spawning remained widespread across the SOG, and some traditional spawning areas experienced stronger returns than in 2025. But conservation doesn’t happen in one-year snapshots. When we zoom out and look at the full 75-year record presented in DFO’s report, a different picture emerges.
The long-term figures tracking spawn index, spawn length, survey observations, and spawning distribution show a population that has experienced dramatic fluctuations over time. Rather than a story of steady recovery, the historical record is one of repeated declines followed by only partial recoveries. That distinction is important because Pacific herring are not simply another commercial fish stock. They are a forage fish, the foundation of the Salish Sea food web.
When we zoom out even further and consider that DFO monitoring data in the Strait of Georgia only extends back to 1951, once decades of industrial exploitation had already transformed many Pacific herring populations, it becomes clear that to understand what a truly abundant herring population looked like, we need to look beyond the modern monitoring record. For thousands of years, Indigenous Peoples along the Northwest Coast have described herring as one of the ecological foundations of coastal life.
Chinook salmon, rebounding humpback whales, harbour seals, Steller sea lions, grebes, murres, cormorants, marbled murrelets and dozens of other species depend directly or indirectly on abundant herring. The ecological question, therefore, is not simply whether there are enough herring to support a commercial fishery. It is whether there are enough herring to support the ecosystem that evolved around them.
