After a big haul Thursday, the Togiak herring purse seine fleet is closing in quickly on its quota. As of this morning’s tally, the fleet had about 2,800 tons left to fish. Tim Sands is the area management biologist with the Department of Fish and Game.
“They took 2,800 tons yesterday,” Sands said. “I don’t think there’s quite enough capacity today for them to take another 28 (hundred) so we’ll give them all of today and then tomorrow we’ll look at it and see where they’re at. And give them a little bit of time tomorrow to get enough capacity to take the rest of the quota without taking too much more”
The season opened last Friday, and has plugged along at about 2000 tons harvested per day, which is right online with the daily capacity of the four processors.
There are close to a dozen gill-netters fishing herring now, but their catch has been small. So far they have taken about 1000 tons out of a quota of 7000.
