Fish On the Brain

And Love for the herring.....

Mar 06, 2026

Words cannot express how deep my love and gratitude goes for these precious little fish, for all the natural world that keeps giving.

I started drawing and singing and sending out love to the wonderful little herring that migrate up the West Coast at this time of year and spawn in special areas where their eggs cling to rocks, kelp, eelgrass and more, nurturing and feeding the ocean and all inhabitants of the coast.

(drawing I did for my last post on Substack. hoping for the herring to return in large numbers)…

and a fish hanging below which I am working on…..

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The full moon of March 1st started with a calm sea and foam over the ocean around my home. Normally the sea foam is a result of big waves crashing on the rocks but it was calm yet the ocean was frothy…and there was a faint smell of fish in the air. (It is interesting living on the ocean, when out in the boat, we often could smell salmon in the ocean around us. Not a strong odor but just their presence which was great for catching fish for dinner.)

The cove below my house, starting to be milky and frothy.

Then on March 2nd, with a full eclipse of the moon taking place across North America…..it happened!!

This is what herring spawning looks like…. (Thanks to Atleo Air)…

The water turns turquoise from the male’s milky spawn which coats the eggs that stick to the kelp.

With the spawning herring come all the marine and coastal life that depends upon this migration. Eagles come from inland and Halibut, Cod and Skates lay their eggs offshore anticipating the emergence of the millions of tiny herring. Everything is fed…ravens, wolves, bears, crows, shorebirds and more as well as much of the marine life and wild salmon on the coast. It is one of the most important migrations in regards to the life in the ocean as well as the inlets and on land.

The first sign was the Orca or Killer Whales….Photo by Quoashinis (Cosy) Lawson

Then the grey whales and humpbacks, followed by thousands of seagulls, sea lions, eagles, shorebirds, seals and more.

….This was the bay near my home.

First Nations traditionally put branches in the water for the herring to lay their eggs on as well as harvesting the roe on kelp for their smokehouses and to eat fresh.

Roe on kelp….above on eelgrass and below on big fronds of kelp.

The spawn lasts only a few days in each area then the fish move on and others follow, moving up the coast, fertilizing the marine environment. The eggs generally hatch out within a few weeks releasing millions of little herring, vulnerable before the scales grow on their bodies.

Herring are threatened by sea lice from fish farms, by pollution from sewage and other effluent, by fish farms that smell of one of their main predators, salmon. The herring are a sensitive and fragile species that depend upon their sheer numbers in order to survive the many predators which depend upon them for survival in the early spring as well as the environments and weather they have to deal with.

Fishing for herring has been taking place forever, everything feeds on it. If the fish lay eggs on top of other eggs, if it gets too thick, the eggs underneath can get smothered. Some fishing is not necessarily a bad thing if is it is only taking a small amount of what it can sustain, leaving lots to return, never letting it get depleted.