🐟 Top 10 Animals That Rely On Pacific Herring
#9— Sea Lions

For sea lions, herring isn’t just a meal—it’s survival. This highly oily, nutrient-rich fish is a staple food source, helping these marine mammals maintain the blubber they need for warmth, energy, and reproduction.

Why Herring Matters

🐟 Herring is a high-quality, energy-dense fish that provides essential fats and nutrients.
🐟 Blubber is life. Without enough herring, sea lions struggle to maintain their fat reserves, impacting their health, survival, and reproductive success.
🐟 When Steller sea lions lose access to herring and have to switch to a lower-fat fish, like pollock, they have to eat a lot more! Sea lions would need to consume approximately 60% more pollock to achieve an equivalent energy intake as a herring-based diet.

Sea lions are a crucial part of the marine food web, but their survival depends on the availability of healthy herring populations. Without herring, the impacts ripple across the entire ecosystem.

Protecting herring means protecting sea lions and the balance of our oceans.

👉 Stay tuned as we reveal the final species in our Top 10 list that relies on Pacific herring!

📸 @iantmcallister

#PacificWild #ProtectPacificHerring #BIGlittlefish #Herring #PacificHerring #Top10 #SeaLions

For Tolkien Reading Day this year, we re-wrote one of his most famous poems to honour Pacific herring: the one fish to rule them all, the foundation of the food web.

Three herring for the migrating seabirds under the sky,
Seven for the cod and flatfish in their halls of benthic stone,
Nine for Pacific Salmon doomed to spawn and die,
One for the killer whales on their apex throne

In the Land of British Columbia where the spring seas rage.
One Fish to rule them all,
One Fish to find them,
One Fish to bring them all, and in the ocean bind them

While hobbits destroyed the One Ring on March 25 by casting it into a fiery mountain, we hope to PROTECT the one fish against heating oceans, overfishing and habitat destruction.

Support our work and follow Pacific Wild for more!

Poem adaptation by @sydneycdixon

#tolkienday #lordoftherings #Lordoftheringsmemes #herring #foragefish #marineconservation #environmentalcomedy #foodweb #killerwhales #orcas #beautifulbritishcolumbia

🐟 Top 10 Animals That Rely On Pacific Herring
#8 – Halibut

Pacific herring aren’t just vital for birds and mammals—they’re also a key food source for large predatory fish like halibut.

During herring spawning season, halibut take full advantage of the dense schools of herring that gather near the coast. In fact, herring make up about 53% of a halibut’s diet during this time. Their abundance and accessibility make them an energy-rich, easy-to-catch prey.

When halibut move in to feed, they also attract marine mammals and sharks, making herring a crucial link in the broader marine food web.

Protecting herring means supporting healthy fish populations and the predators that rely on them.

👉 Stay tuned as we continue highlighting species that rely on herring for survival!

#PacificWild #ProtectPacificHerring #BIGlittlefish #Herring #PacificHerring #Top10 #Halibut

Glacier preservation isn’t just about ice—it’s about survival!

Glaciers are vanishing before our eyes, and with them, the steady flow of life-giving water that sustains British Columbia’s wild coast. As the ice melts, rivers run dry, ecosystems unravel, and species fight to survive.

💧 B.C.’s glaciers are vital to salmon-bearing rivers. As they shrink due to climate change, freshwater flow becomes unpredictable, threatening salmon populations—a critical food source for bears, sea wolves, and orcas.
💧 The Great Bear Rainforest and coastal estuaries depend on cold, glacial-fed rivers. Changes in water temperature and flow impact everything from eelgrass beds to the wildlife that relies on them.
💧 Freshwater flow shifts alter salinity levels in coastal waters, disrupting marine food chains—including herring, the foundation of B.C.’s marine ecosystems.

From mountain peaks to ocean depths, the loss of glaciers is a crisis we cannot ignore. The time to act is now: reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect freshwater ecosystems, and fight for the future of our coast.

Protect what you love. Protect what is wild.

📸 @iantmcallister

#WorldWaterDay #ProtectBCGlaciers #ProtectBCWater #Glaciers #ClimateActionNow