Tag: togiak

Once-Prized Togiak Herring Has No Buyers
Fishermen's News Online, News

Once-Prized Togiak Herring Has No Buyers

Back in the late 1990s, herring caught commercially off of Togiak, an Inuit village in the Dillingham Census Area of Southwestern Alaska, was worth over $1,000 a ton. And with an allowable catch of 20,000 tons, it would fetch fishermen $20 million. “In the heyday of the 1990s there were 300 seine boats and 500 gillnetters,” Tim Sands, area management biologist at Dillingham for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said. An ADF&G announcement released on Jan. 13 put the total allowable 2025 harvest at 45,761, but as of Jan. 27, there were no buyers, Sands said. With no buyers to purchase the commercial harvest, a ton of herring has no value, he said, adding that the last Togiak commercial herring fishery to have buyers was in 2022. The historic size of Togiak herring ...