Sardines return by the millions to B.C.
Ucluelet, Zeballos and Port Hardy harvested 22,000 tonnes of fast-swimming fish last year
BY GORDON HAMILTON, VANCOUVER SUN
Sardines have returned to the B.C. coast in schools “thick enough to walk on,” creating a fascinating spectacle and new fishery on Vancouver Island.
Fishing fleets in resourcedependent communities like Ucluelet, Zeballos and Port Hardy harvested 22,000 tonnes of sardines last year, a tiny fraction of the schools that observers say can be hundreds of metres long as they move into the island’s bays and inlets.
“I’ve seen them on the west coast of Vancouver Island thick enough to walk on,” Barron Carswell, senior manager of marine fisheries and seafood policy for the provincial Agriculture Ministry, said in an interview. “It’s incredible. They are all over the place. You can go into little bays and the surface of the water is all sardines.”
Sardines, also called pilchards, were at one time a major B.C. fishery, but they mysteriously disappeared in the 1940s. Overfishing along their migration route from California to Alaska is believed to be a prime cause.
Their return is being attributed to changes in ocean conditions.
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