Herring is a key food source and a candidate for endangered species status
READ MORE
Climate change impacts in Whatcom County
The Bellingham Herald explores the threats, causes and impacts of climate change in Whatcom County, Wash. Reporters Warren Sterling and Robert Mittendorf also offer a look at what’s being done now to combat climate change and offer tips on what you can do to help.
Expand All
This is one in a series of Bellingham Herald stories looking at climate change impacts and solutions in Whatcom County.
The threat: Pacific herring — including the Cherry Point subspecies — have been declining since state biologists began studying them in the 1970s, according to the University of Washington’s Puget Sound Institute.
Herring are a forage fish, a small schooling species with silver sides and a blueish back. They are a key food source for humans, for whales and for larger fish, said Casey Cook, director of the Marine Life Center at the Port of Bellingham. Their eggs provide food for seabirds.
Their spawning periods are from January through April when the water roils and their “milt” turns the water an iridescent blue.
State Department of Fish and Wildlife reports showed that Cherry Point herring were at record lows in 2009. Pacific herring are a candidate for state threatened and endangered species status.
The cause: Pollution and other effects of rising human population in the Puget Sound are thought to be the major issues, along with warming ocean temperatures and over-fishing. Loss of the eelgrass meadows where adults spawn and young fish hide has also had a considerable impact.
Impact now: “They’ll get smaller and their schools will get smaller, and it will continue a downward trend,” Cook said. Cook said that herring as so threatened that she won’t collect specimens for aquarium displays at the Marine Life Center.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREHow we did this series on climate change impacts in Bellingham and Whatcom County
Reporters Robert Mittendorf and Warren Sterling spent three months researching climate change’s impacts on Whatcom County residents for this series of a dozen stories in anticipation of Bellingham and Whatcom County focusing on climate change in early 2020.
They talked to experts about how climate change is manifesting in Whatcom County, what is being done locally about those impacts and what residents can do on their own to help.
Why we wrote this series on local climate change impacts now
Bellingham City Council members voted Dec. 9 to create a permanent council Climate Action Committee and will begin discussing the Bellingham Climate Action Plan Task Force’s recommendations at their Jan. 13, 2020, meeting.
The Whatcom County Climate Impact Advisory Committee expects to update the County Council in summer 2020 about its review of the Whatcom County 2007 Climate Protection and Energy Plan. The advisory committee has been meeting since March 2018 after the county’s 2016 Comprehensive Plan update included climate impacts and created the committee. Cascadia Consulting of Seattle was contracted to provide the committee with a greenhouse emissions update, a current science summary and vulnerability assessments of water, ecosystem, development and transportation infrastructure in early 2020.
What questions do you have about local climate change impacts?
Please send questions and future coverage suggestions to newsroom@bellinghamherald.com.
What’s being done now: Whatcom County officials are working to rewrite zoning that determines growth in the industrial area around Cherry Point, which is home to two oil refineries and an aluminum smelter. A controversial shipping terminal called Gateway Pacific has since been scrapped — its permits were withdrawn in 2017. The Cherry Point Aquatic Reserve was designated in 2010.
What you can do now: Help protect eelgrass beds and support shoreline restoration.
Tomorrow: Salmon.
This story was originally published December 19, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
