The 2022 mature herring biomass forecast is 357,536 tons and is the highest forecast since an age structured assessment model was first used for the 1993 forecast.
Under a 20% exploitation rate, the 2022 potential harvest is 71,507 tons in all fisheries and 65,107 tons in the Togiak sac roe fisheries (purse seine and gillnet).
The large forecast is due primarily to the largest estimated recruitment of age-4 fish on record in 2021 (about 1.5 times larger than the large recruitments seen in the early 1980s) and one of the largest recruitments on record in 2020.
These cohorts are projected to make up an even larger portion of the population in 2022 due to increasing maturity. The majority of the mature population in 2022 is age-5 and age-6 fish, both by number (52% and 20% respectively) and by biomass (45% and 21% respectively.
The Togiak roe herring harvest for the 2021 fishery was 42,639 tons, or nearly 85.3 million pounds.
