The Great Sitka Herring Return

By: Spencer B. Beebe

Kh’asheechtlaa, Louise Brady, a Tlingit matriarch, traces her ancestry to the earliest Tlingit settlement of what is now known as Sitka Sound in southeast Alaska. For decades she and her family watched as Pacific herring returns declined, and the vital Tlingit subsistence and cultural tradition virtually vanished.

In 2016, Brady founded Herring Protectors to protest the scale of the commercial herring fishery, as herring numbers had become greatly reduced. This year, she and residents of Sitka watched the extraordinary return to abundance that once sustained Indigenous people for millennia, as well as a commercial fishery for 100 years. With nothing but her own relentless tenacity, she and her neighbors—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, citizens and fishers alike—helped to reduce the commercial fishery to a sensible scale.

This spring, the residents of Sitka Sound celebrated the results of their labors. I have spent my life on this coast, but had only heard of, never witnessed first-hand, the herring spawning and harvest. Fortunately, earlier this year, my daughter Lydia and I traveled to Sitka to witness the remarkable abundance and wealth of the “nature state” we call Salmon Nation.

Salmon Nation once had the densest population of hunter-gatherer cultures on the face of the earth. It’s no surprise, as the coast, rivers, forests, and tidal flats—where the food is abundant—sustained the people in this part of the world for thousands of years.

On the morning of March 26, 2025, Lydia and I woke up to a crystal clear blue sky. No wind. Fresh snow in the mountains. The harbor water was clear at 8 a.m., but by 10 a.m., 70 miles of coastal waters around Sitka Sound turned white with herring spawn. The spawn covered every piece of kelp, eelgrass, and rock.

The reason for this milky white color is that female herring have already laid their eggs and the males arrive to fertilize them, before returning to the sea. They start spawning at four or five years old and live to be around 11 years of age. They can get pretty big—sometimes up to 18 inches long. As you walk along the shore, there are literally millions of herring spawning. The richness was extraordinary.

This is the herring roe—piles of unfertilized herring eggs. You couldn’t walk without stepping on all this food. You can reach down, grab a handful, and eat this incredible abundance of really rich, tasty roe, right from the beach.

That’s the city of Sitka there in the background. These herring got caught on the rocks as the tide went out. It was like this for miles.

Listen. Ravens fly overhead talking with each other. They, along with eagles, crows, gulls, seabirds, whales, porpoise, sea lions, and chinook salmon, join in a feeding frenzy of herring and roe.

This is a big, beautiful, rich topography with both large flats and rocky shores, where the halibut and rockfish live. The salmon are iconic for their returns here, too, but the species of fish that hang along the coast are diverse and numerous.

Unlike other towns along the coast, Sitka lobbied the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) to eliminate ground trawling in Sitka Sound. The Sitka Tribe and Kh’asheechtlaa lobbied long and hard, with commercial fishers by their side, and their efforts paid off: 70 miles of coastline is now covered in an extraordinary abundance.

We raise our hands to Kh’asheechtlaa, the Tlingit Tribe, and the many good citizens and organizations in southeast Alaska for their foresight and perseverance. We sincerely hope this is but a sign of a return to ecosystem, economic, cultural, and social well-being in one beautiful part of Salmon Nation.