Lynn Canal Herring article from the Empire

No Endangered Species Act listing for Lynn Canal herring

Story last updated at 4/11/2008 - 12:19 pm

The National Marine Fisheries Service says there’s no evidence Lynn Canal herring stocks are a distinct population from the rest of Southeast Alaska’s herring. On that basis, the agency has denied a Sierra Club petition to list the local herring under the Endangered Species Act as threatened or endangered.

Now the agency must investigate whether the larger Southeast Alaska herring population might be endangered or threatened.

The National Marine Fisheries Service based its decision on a recommendation from a team of 10 federal scientists who spent a year reviewing existing data on the herring.

The Juneau chapter of the Sierra Club filed the petition April 2, 2007.

The agency’s decision was published today in the Federal Register and can be found on the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Web site: www.fakr.noaa.gov/notice/73fr19824.pdf."

Taken from the Juneau Empire website this morning 4/12/08

I hope tomorrow's article has some interviews from a fisherman or two that have been telling me for a few years that the lack of herring in Lynn Canal is affecting all the fishing in northern southeast Alaskan waters. I'll get a quote or two soon, once again, I'm new at this so bare with me...Although I am all for the mine, if they are preventing this I just hope they can back it up with scientific data because the mine isn't worth our salmon runs around here. I gotta have my fish!

I'm kind of hoping I start to get some visitors here...