In Sheet’ká, Łingít fishers share herring harvests with a surprise influx of grey whales

This story is co-published with High Country News.

---

Growing up, Yanshkawoo (Harvey Kitka) never saw many grey whales in the waters of Sheet’ká Sound.

The Łingít (Tlingít) Elder and subsistence yaaw (herring) fisherman recalled harvesting gáax’w (herring eggs) in his territories before “Alaska” became a “U.S.” state in 1959. It was a time when yaaw were plentiful and sightings of whales were rare — just a handful at most.  

“There was food everywhere,” mused Yanshkawoo, tracing a slow circle in the air with his hand — a gesture toward the abundance the ocean once held. He sat at a crowded café in Sheet’ká (Sitka), his voice calm but thoughtful.

“They had no reason to come into the Sound back then.” 

But things changed in 2019, when fishers, researchers and community members began noticing an influx of grey whales, an order of magnitude larger than in previous years.

Just as vast stretches of coastline transforms into a milky blue haze marking the annual yaaw spawn, suddenly, there were more than 150 grey whales sharing the same waters — and sustenance — as the Sheet’ká Ḵwáan (people of Sitka Tribe). 

Every spring since time immemorial, Łingít, Haida and Híɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) people, among others, have gathered haaw da.aa (eggs on hemlock boughs) and kelp to share, trade and gift across communities. 

Now, an unprecedented number of grey whales have joined the harvest, drawn by the same rich food source. 

Their growing presence brings a new pressure — one that both humans and non-humans are learning to navigate. That grey whales are joining the frenzy underscores just how critical these gáax’w have become — and how fragile the balance is.

‘There’s nothing out there that didn’t live off a herring’

Yanshkawoo, wearing an old checkered shirt, carries a quiet contemplation shaped by a lifetime on the water. 

The Elder is ch’aak (eagle) moiety, leader of the Kaagwaantaan clan. (Łingít people are born into either of two moieties, or halves, along the matrilineal line — raven, and eagle or wolf).

Like many in Sheet’ká, Yanshkawoo wants to understand the sudden resurgence of the massive marine mammals.

“I think they’re talking to each other,” he said, furrowing his bushy eyebrows.

With food growing scarcer across the Pacific, Yanshkawoo believes the grey whales are gathering in Sheet’ká to feed — and to communicate. After all, Sheet’ká Sound is home to the last stronghold of yaaw in southeast “Alaska.” Elsewhere, the stocks have mostly collapsed under the pressure of overfishing. 

Surrounded by mountains and rainforest, Sheet’ká is a coastal town on “Baranof Island” in southeast “Alaska” — just across the Gulf of Alaska from Haida Gwaii. The town sits within Łingít Aani (Tlingít territory), home to the Sheet’ká Ḵwáan, or the people of Sitka. 

Today, it’s a small city of about 8,000 people, accessible only by boat or plane.

It’s been a spectacle, said Yanshkawoo, to see the whales right from the oceanside road. 

“It’s kind of amazing to watch them peel the gáax’w off the kelp,” he smiled, a twinkle in his eye.

The gáax’w are perfect food for these enormous creatures, which can reach 20 tonnes and 13 to 15 metres long — equivalent to the size of a city bus. 

Yanshkawoo believes the greys are helping the herring. When gáax’w piles up in thick layers, the ones underneath often suffocate; only the outer few survive. 

But when grey whales feed on the outer layers, he said, they give the gáax’w underneath a better chance to hatch. 

“Like we said, it’s food for everything,” said Yanshkawoo. “There’s nothing out there that didn’t live off a herring, one way or another.” 

Herring, along with other forage fish, are a foundation species, meaning they’re essential to the entire marine food web they occupy. 

The small silvery fish are migratory, often spending winters in deeper offshore waters, before returning in early spring to spawn in sheltered intertidal areas, such as along the coastline of southeast “Alaska.”

In Łingít Aaní, their gáax’w have nourished Łingít people for countless generations. And since European colonization, they’ve supported commercial fishers. 

Their return, which lasts from days to weeks, has always been celebrated by the Sheet’ká community.

Before industrial fishing, up to 120,000 grey whales across coast

Since time immemorial, Indigenous Peoples from southeast “Alaska” have fished yaaw as part of their seasonal harvesting traditions — smoking and cooking the meat, rendering oil from the flesh, and collecting gáax’w on daaw (gáax’w on macrocystis) and haaw da.aa.

Gáax’w are best eaten fresh and are cherished for their clean, ocean taste and the satisfying pop as they burst on the tongue. When harvested on hemlock, a subtle hint of pine lingers with each bite. 

This seasonal delicacy is part of a much deeper relationship. Along the northern stretch of the so-called “U.S.” – “Canada” border, Łingít, Haida and Tsimshian communities hold extensive knowledge of the yaaw life cycle. 

That knowledge is passed down through generations and carried in oral histories, for instance the story of the Herring Lady — a Łingít figure who greeted the fish each year at Yaaw Teiyí (Herring Rock) — marking their return to spawn on the shores.

But that balance has been disrupted. Colonization, and the rise of commercial fishing industries, brought extractive practices that placed enormous pressure on both yaaw and grey whales, destabilizing relationships that Indigenous communities had carefully stewarded for generations.

Industrial scale hunting of Pacific grey whales began in the mid 1800s, when whalers targeted them from northern “California” to the calving lagoons along the “Baja California” peninsula.  Before this period, historical estimates suggest the Eastern North Pacific population may have numbered up to 120,000 individuals between “Baja California” and the Bering Sea. 

After whaling was banned in the 1940s, grey whale populations began to rebound. 

By the 1970s, some even started being curious toward humans — a shift from their reputation of fear and aggression during the whaling era, when whalers called them “devil fish” for their violent resistance to harpoons. 

But a decade ago, an unprecedented warming event, the Pacific Marine Heatwave, also known as “the Blob” disrupted entire marine ecosystems in the Gulf of Alaska. From phytoplankton to humpbacks and fin whales, species across the food web were dying at alarming rates.

The global population of grey whales declined by nearly half between 2016 to 2023, according to a NOAA report. In the same period, roughly 690 grey whales washed up on beaches from “Mexico” to “Alaska,” many emaciated. While the science remains inconclusive, a growing number of researchers believe that the whales’ traditional foraging grounds in the Bering Sea were no longer providing enough food to sustain them.

When Sheet’ká Sound began filling up with dozens of grey whales, researchers were surprised. 

The Alaska Whale Foundation, which had been studying humpback whales in the region, broadened its research to learn more about the sudden influx of marine mammals: where the grey whales came from, what they were doing, and what their presence might reveal about their overall health.

To identify each individual, the researchers fly drones to photograph the unique markings of each whale. This year, they counted 170 individuals, though they say the actual number is likely higher. Because part of the coastline falls within the restricted airspace of Sitka Airport, drones can’t operate there. So some whales go uncounted. 

The researchers’ long-term goal is to determine how much blubber each whale gains during their time in Sheet’ká. Those data may offer clues about how many gáax’w they’re consuming, and how deeply they rely on yaaw to survive. It could also offer insight into the whales’ role in the larger web of life, and how their presence affects yaaw and all the beings, human and non-human, who depend on them. 

The rise of the lucrative sac roe harvest

In the decades after the “U.S.” bought “Alaska” from “Russia” in 1867, commercial interest in Pacific yaaw surged.

Industrial plants — like the one at Killisnoo, near the Łingít village of Angoon — moved away from processing whales to processing massive schools of yaaw into oil and fertilizer. 

With the arrival of Norwegian settlers came new fishing technologies — purse seines, gill nets, and eventually power boats — that made large-scale harvests possible. 

Yaaw were also increasingly used as bait in the growing halibut fishery. 

But the pressure took its toll: between 1932 and 1947, several regional yaaw stocks in southeast “Alaska” collapsed on three separate occasions.

In 1969, a decade after “Alaska” gained statehood and assumed control over its fisheries, its government quietly opened an unofficial sac roe herring fishery in Sheet’ká — without regulations, a management plan, or consultation with the Łingít community. 

The sac roe fishery targets female yaaw just before they spawn, harvesting them while their gáax’w sacs are still full. This practice prevents the gáax’w from being released into the ecosystem — interrupting their reproductive cycle, and removing a critical food source for countless marine species that depend on yaaw spawn each spring.

It also creates a huge amount of waste, as only the roe is harvested for export, while the rest of the fish — including meat, bones, and organs — is often ground into low-value products like fish meal, or left unused altogether.

The sac roe was bound for Japan, where kazunoko (salted herring eggs) is a cherished New Year’s delicacy. With Japan’s own herring stocks in steep decline, demand for Alaskan roe surged, and a new economic opportunity emerged for commercial fishers.

A 2009 report by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) describes the sac roe fishery as having “a gold rush atmosphere,” in which fishers could potentially earn over a million dollars from a single seine set.

Jeff Skrade, then-manager of Bristol Bay’s Togiak yaaw fishery, recounted one such moment in the report: “One year in the early ‘80s we went out for a short test fishery, you know, take a little bite,” he said. “We knew there was some fish around but didn’t know how much so we called a 20-minute opening and they harvested 20,000 tons. I’ll never forget it. We were all flabbergasted.”

‘One of the most interesting, unique fisheries’

Former commercial fisheries processor Aan aa Tláa (Krissa Huston) recalls, as a child, when her father, a commercial fisherman, calling home from Sheetká, as he waited, tinkering on the skiffs, tuning them up, in anxious anticipation for the sac roe fishery to open. 

Before 2002, the sac roe fishery operated as a derby — what locals called the “race for fish” — where an unlimited number of boats scrambled to catch as many yaaw as possible in a limited window of time. When opening day arrived, a gunshot fired into the air signaled the start, and the fleet — already idling on the water — launched into a frantic chase to haul in as much as they could manage.

“I grew up always hearing about Sitka during this exciting time,” she said. “Of course, from a Western perspective.” 

Aan aa Tláa is Łingít/Filipino/European, from Wooshkeetaan (Eagle-Shark) clan.

“I had the privilege of being raised by both my mom as a Łingít person, and then my father as a non-Indigenous commercial fisherman,” said Aan aa Tláa. “And so I bring a lot of those perspectives into my work.”

With a vibrant yaaw tattoo curling up her arm, Aan aa Tláa — eight months pregnant with her first child — felt the pull of tradition. She made one final journey to Sheet’ká, hoping to witness the herring’s return before bringing her own new life into the world.

As she strolls a sandy beach covered in thick clumps of né, she recalls her father bringing home gáax’w to her family every year.

“It was really interesting to have my dad as a commercial fisherman bringing the herring eggs home to us,” she said, “and seeing those relationships between the Tribe and the commercial fishermen.”

These relationships have influenced Aan aa Tláa’s career trajectory.

After studying fisheries technology at school, and working her way up in the commercial fishing sector as a seafood processor, she finally went back to school to study marine policy.

Specifically, she wanted to study the sac roe fishery in southeast “Alaska,” where she was born and raised. 

“What makes this one of the most interesting, unique fisheries, I think, in the world,” Aan aa Tláa says, “is they’re looking for herring at this very specific time.”

But the problem, she explained, is that “it’s not well-aligned with Łingít knowledge and management.” That’s because commercial fisheries take the whole roe and the males as well, she said, “which is something that we’ve never done in mass quantities.” 

In 1973, four years after the sac roe fishery unofficially began, the state started surveying yaaw spawning grounds. It began using the term “pristine biomass” to describe yaaw populations that hadn’t yet been fished — or were only just beginning to recover. 

This framing — known as “shifting baseline syndrome” in conservation science — refers to the way each generation comes to accept a more depleted state of nature as normal.

“So we just forget, and we wipe away what happened in those fisheries collapses, and then it is deemed pristine,” said Aan aa Tláa. 

It’s one way, she says, that the state can claim its practices are sustainable: “Because they’re able to say, ‘Oh look, this depletion is just the new normal.’”

‘We were getting close to a point of civil disobedience’

In response to calls for more local control, Alaska created the Board of Fisheries in 1975, which was established to set fishery regulations and harvest limits, allocate resources among user groups — subsistence, commercial and sport — and consider biological, social and economic information in its decisions. 

The governor-appointed board holds regular meetings where members of the public — including Indigenous leaders, commercial fishers, and concerned members of the public — can propose and influence regulations, such as challenging gear types, creating protections, or adjusting seasons or fish quotas. 

When members of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska began testifying at Board of Fisheries meetings in the 1990s, Yanshkawoo recalls Elders being cut off midway through their traditional introductions — limited by the three-minute time cap imposed on public speakers.

“We had to start telling them what we hoped they would hear,” he said. “It took a long time to get them to listen to us. We were getting close to a point of civil disobedience.” 

In December 2018, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska took the state to court, accusing it of mismanaging the yaaw fishery. 

The tribe argued Alaska failed to uphold its legal duty to provide a “reasonable opportunity” for subsistence harvesters. 

Under federal law, subsistence harvests are meant to take priority over commercial fishing. When the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was passed in 1971, only Indigenous Alaskans were permitted to harvest under subsistence allocations. But after a federal court ruled that restriction unconstitutional, the right to harvest for subsistence was extended to all residents — a decision that effectively erased Indigenous-specific rights and further undermined Indigenous authority over traditional food systems.

Despite this, at the centre of the 2018 case was the concern that years of commercial sac roe openings had put industry ahead of Indigenous food sovereignty.

In 2021, the court ruled in favor of the tribe, declaring “Alaska” had failed to properly manage the fishery in a way that protected subsistence rights.

Last year, after former president Joe Biden issued federal guidance directing agencies to integrate Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge into their decision-making, the Alaska Board of Fisheries adopted a formal policy recognizing local and traditional knowledge as a key component of fisheries management. 

The policy grants nominated knowledge holders, like Yanshkawoo, up to 10 minutes to speak, rather than being limited to the standard three-minute limit. But Aan aa Tláa is skeptical of the benefits of the new process. “It isn’t necessarily giving the tribe the platform to exercise their rights to manage the fishery,” she said. 

Single-species model ‘not good ecosystem management’

According to anthropologist Thomas F. Thornton — who was adopted into the Łingít Kaagwaantaan clan in Sheet’ká for his work on Łingít geography and culture — the court ruling led to some improvements by the state. 

For example, ADF&G has continued to spread out the commercial sac roe harvest over multiple openings to reduce pressure on any one area. The practice began in the early 2000s, but is now more explicitly tied to subsistence needs. 

According to Aaron Dupuis, biologist and area manager for Sitka at ADF&G, the government has become more consistent in enforcing commercial closures, both within designated subsistence protection zones, and in unprotected areas where hemlock branches have been placed by harvesters to collect gáax’w. 

And this year, the Board of Fisheries reduced the maximum harvest rate from 20 down to 15 per cent of the estimated biomass, citing a Fisheries and Oceans Canada study showing lower caps better support ecosystem resilience — especially for stocks vulnerable to long-term declines. This more conservative approach is one that the Sheet’ká Tribe has long advocated for to support the marine ecosystem.

The problem, says Thornton, is that nobody really knows what’s going on with herring. 

ADF&G uses a simple single-species population model to forecast yaaw returns each year based on limited sampling and other data — without accounting for interactions with other species or broader ecosystems.

“It may be okay if things in the environment are relatively stable,” says Thornton, “but we know that’s not the case. The grey whales are an excellent illustration of this.”

This forecasting science was the one section of the Sitka Tribe’s court case that the nation narrowly lost on. 

The tribe claimed that ADF&G was legally required to use the best available science when managing the yaaw fishery. 

However, the court couldn’t decide what the best available science was. 

Instead, the judge ruled that there is no requirement in “Alaska” that ADF&G must use the “best available science” in its management decisions. Instead, it must use “relevant information” — a lower threshold, which the judge concluded was already met, despite the tribe disagreeing with its methods and conclusions. 

Sherri Dressel, a statewide herring fisheries scientist with the Commercial Fisheries Division of ADF&G, said while it’s true that members of the public don’t like the single-species population model, they are “the gold standard for fisheries management.”

“Additionally, using single-species population models coupled with conservative harvest rates, as done in Sitka, is the most commonly recommended method for sustainable management across species, including prey species, nationally and internationally,” she said in an email to IndigiNews.

But according to Thornton, using the single-species model for a foundation and “cultural keystone” species like herring, “is just not good ecosystem management.” 

‘Everybody wants to make a living’

When IndigiNews visited Sheet’ká for the 2025 yaaw season, there were around a dozen commercial boats on the water — a sharp drop from past years, when anywhere from 50 to 100 boats took part. 

The decline was partly due to industry consolidation; Silver Bay Seafoods, one of the region’s largest processors, had recently acquired Icicle Seafoods, tying up several vessels in the deal. 

But it’s also part of a broader trend. In recent years, demand for sac roe — especially in Japan — continues to fall. Once considered a prized delicacy, kazunoko has lost appeal with younger generations.

As a result, fewer and fewer boats have participated in the sac roe fishery.

In an attempt to revamp the industry, last year ADF&G established a Herring Revitalization Committee. At first, many in the community believed the new initiative was meant to protect herring. 

Sitka Tribe councillor Kh’asheechtlaa (Louise Brady) sat in on the committee’s first formal meeting, hoping to understand its intentions.

“It was really disappointing,” she said. “The conversation was, ‘Oh, how about a bait fishery?’” 

Now, the community believes the Herring Revitalization Committee isn’t actually about the revitalization of Pacific herring, but instead to revitalize commercial markets. 

“They want to be able to expand herring fisheries beyond bait and roe for other foods, supplements and products like that, and creating new fisheries,” said Thornton. 

“There could be commercial herring fisheries that are much more sustainable than sac roe, so I don’t personally object to that quest. Everybody wants to make a living. But they’re kind of going about it behind the scenes.”

Any such effort, said Thornton, needs to be transparent and fully inclusive of local tribes and communities, which rely on abundant yaaw for their existing livelihoods, culture, and wellbeing.

Since the initial meeting last year, the committee has largely been silent, leaving the community waiting for an update and next steps. 

“No directives have made it down to us,” said Dupuis. “It’s all just still in the works.” 

‘It’s backbreaking work — we’re all really tired’

Meanwhile, many subsistence harvesters feel that this year’s season brought more gáax’w than they’ve seen in recent years.

“I’m so excited that we’ll have enough herring eggs to send down to my daughter-in-law and my granddaughters and friends,” said Sitka Tribe Councillor Kh’asheechtlaa, who also runs a local grassroots charity, the Herring Protectors. 

Yanshkawoo agreed. He said that last year there was only a thin layer of gáax’w on the beaches compared to this year. 

“And if they leave it alone,” he added, “we’ll get more and more, and it’ll get bigger and bigger every year.” 

Good news for the whales, Yanshkawoo added.

But biologist Dupuis said he’s not convinced. 

“I think it’s people’s perception of it,” he said. Because yaaw spawned within sight of town, in areas more accessible by boat, many community members think there are more than previous years. 

According to Dupuis, data from 2018 and 2019 shows little biomass near the town of Sheet’ká, “but a lot of it was offshore,” he said. 

He does believe, however, that separating commercial activity from subsistence areas — which are largely closer to town where smaller boats can access them — is crucial. 

Ixt’ Ik’Eesh (Steve Johnson) — who some have nicknamed the “Herring King” — has been called a “super harvester” by ADF&G for his work in the subsistence gáax’w fishery. 

He has the time, knowledge, and equipment to consistently bring in a successful harvest.

“Some of my earliest memories in childhood are of herring,” Ixt’ Ik’Eesh said. “I don’t know what life is like outside of that.” 

He recalls being in a skiff — a small open boat — with his dad and uncle, yaaw all around them. “I could reach in the water and touch them with my hands,” he said nostalgically as he drove his truck. 

When IndigiNews spent the day with him, he was about half way through the season, having already pulled in over 6,000 kilograms of gáax’w. He usually pulls in well over double that amount — about the weight of a fully loaded school bus — by the end of the season. 

He’s been subsistence harvesting for about 20 years. With a smile, he said he does it because he’s “just really good at it.” 

As the conversation goes on, it becomes clear this work is more than just skill, however. It’s a deep passion for him. 

Ixt’ Ik’Eesh, who is also a councillor for Sitka Tribe, doesn’t make money from harvesting; he dedicates weeks harvesting for others, and teaching Łingít people, passing on what he knows hoping to keep the practice alive. 

Every day, he said he receives about 20 requests from people near and far wanting gáax’w. 

Compared to elsewhere in “Alaska” — where yaaw often spawn for just a few days, if at all — the roughly two-week season is unusually long. Yanshkawoo remembers, one year in the ‘80s, the Sheet’ká spawn lasting a month. 

Indigenous harvesters travel from across the state to stay at Ixt’ Ik’Eesh’s home and gather gáax’w to bring back to their communities. 

For Ixt’ Ik’Eesh, distribution is coordinated through multiple Indigenous communities, reaching Łingít people across the continent. 

But the work still costs Ixt’ Ik’Eesh at least two months of his time each year, he said, and what he estimates are $20,000 to $30,000 USD in expenses such as gas, gear and ice, most of which is reimbursed by the tribe.

“It’s backbreaking work — we’re all really tired,” Ixt’ Ik’Eesh said. 

That day, Ixt’ Ik’Eesh drove to and from Sitka Airport three times in an attempt to plug a leaky gáax’w bin headed to “Washington” on a cargo plane.  Ixt’ Ik’Eesh explained that reaching relatives and friends through gáax’w gives him a deep sense of purpose.

Subsistence harvesters like Ixt’ Ik’Eesh cut down trees — ideally mountain hemlock, for its smooth, waxy bark and close-together leaves for yaaw to lay gáax’w on — several days before the yaaw spawn begins, and drag them out of the woods onto boats. 

When Ixt’ Ik’Eesh senses that spawning is about two days away — he says he can smell it in the air, a salty scent of gáax’w — he heads out in his boat and drops hemlock trees into likely spawning spots, anchoring them with rocks wrapped in denim.

“You want to try to build a nest for them — setting the trees close together,” he explained, becoming more animated the more he delved into the process. 

“And set them in a quiet bight without a moving tide.”

Once the trees are in place, Ixt’ Ik’Eesh checks on them daily. He begins hauling them out of the water once they’re covered in gáax’w, which usually takes a couple of days. 

It can ideally take four people to haul the heavy trees out of the water, he said, each set weighing about 450 kilograms. 

Between 2002-2014, the average annual harvest of gáax’w — each about the size of a large grain of sand — was about 73,000 kilograms, according to Thornton’s 2019 study. 

That’s roughly the weight of two Boeing 737s. Of that, 87 percent was shared or exchanged through traditional subsistence networks.

“No other subsistence resource matches herring eggs in terms of the prodigious amounts given away,” writes Thornton, referring not only to the abundance harvested — but also to the vast Indigenous distribution network of the Łingít — reaching from across “Alaska” all the way to relatives and friends as far as “California,” “Florida,” and even internationally. 

Whales’ yaaw harvest — and impacts — still a mystery

As grey whale populations rebound in the area, Ixt’ Ik’Eesh doesn’t believe subsistence harvesters need to worry about competition for the yaaw fishery. 

“They’ve got their little corner and so do we,” he said. “The amount of people that gather eggs — most of them are done by the time the greys come in.” 

For some unknown reason, the grey whales appear to begin feeding about two weeks after the spawn — allowing subsistence harvesters first dibs. 

“We don’t know why they do this,” said Andy Szabo, executive director of the Alaska Whale Foundation. 

“I expect this has to do with the whales taking advantage of other feeding opportunities — including other herring spawning areas elsewhere, likely to the south.”

In southern “British Columbia”, for example, yaaw can spawn as early as February, usually peaking in March, slightly ahead of Sheek’ká Sound.

But the extent to which grey whales might deplete yaaw stocks would be difficult for authorities to assess, because the ADF&G doesn’t begin its Sheet’ká yaaw spawn surveys until after the grey whales have, in theory, already started feeding. 

The most critical thing, Dupuis said, is whether the whales are taking gáax’w deposited before they start the annual survey.

The survey feeds into the department’s single-species population model — itself already controversial — to predict what yaaw numbers might look like the following year. 

Dupuis says the survey already assumes a 10 per cent loss of gáax’w from when the survey begins. But if hundreds of grey whales enter Sitka Sound to feed on gáax’w before the survey starts, the loss is likely far higher. 

“The possibility of the grey whales depleting the herring stocks by eating eggs is quite low,” said Dressel. “Eggs have very high mortality naturally, so eating eggs impacts the population much less than eating fish.”

But with so many players dependent on yaaw, it’s no wonder there has been conflict over the years. 

Despite this, there’s also a strong thread of cooperation and understanding between the user groups. 

Ixt’ Ik’Eesh said many commercial yaaw fishers also want the species conserved, especially compared to the more cutthroat atmosphere within commercial salmon fishing, he said.

Just as former commercial fisher Aan aa Tláa recalls her father bringing home gáax’w as a child, the 2021 book Herring and People of the North Pacific — by Thomas Thornton and Madonna Moss — documents times when commercial fishers shared their catch with Elders and community members.

‘A lot of time to build bridges’

In 1998, commercial harvesters proposed what they saw as a more sustainable alternative to the Sheet’ká Sound sac roe herring fishery: a daaw (gáax’w on macrocystis) fishery that allows fish to enter and leave freely while spawning within submerged racks.  

The idea came after ADF&G and the Sitka Tribe of Alaska jointly hired a tribal liaison to work with the commercial sector. The goal was to propose new ways to make the sector more ethically aligned with Indigenous approaches. 

But the idea was never approved by the state’s Board of Fisheries, despite being proposed again and again, including at last winter’s meeting.

Despite this, Dupuis said he’s determined to continue improving the relationship between yaaw user groups and ADF&G. 

“I’ve taken a lot of time to build bridges where they either weren’t there, or have been damaged over the years,” he said, adding that he even subsistence harvests gáax’w himself — not to eat, but because he enjoys participating in the important communal activity.

For community members like Yanshkawoo, Dupuis’s participation in subsistence practices is promising, “so he knows what we’re talking about,” Yanshkawoo said.

For so many residents in the Sheet’ká area, the arrival of spring means volunteering their time, like Dupuis, to their community’s subsistence harvest effort. 

Kh’asheechtlaa’s Herring Protectors organization has created spaces for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies to help process gáax’w and pack boxes, and to make gifts for their annual Yaaw Koo.éex (herring ceremony), at which they’re welcomed to attend. 

The ceremony, held after the busy yaaw season is over, gathers people from not just Sheet’ká, but across southeast “Alaska,” as well as from other Indigenous communities across the continent who share their deep connection to their yaaw relatives.

The non-profit has also started lobbying and advocating for Indigenous traditional knowledge at Board of Fisheries meetings.

While the inclusion of non-Indigenous allies in yaaw advocacy doesn’t sit well with everyone in the community, Kh’asheechtlaa firmly believes the alliances she’s made have helped build important relationships.

“I never really knew a lot of non-Native people until I started Herring Protectors,” said Kh’asheechtlaa, a member of the Kiks.ádi Women (Raven-Frog Clan), or Herring Lady clan. 

She recounted how she co-founded Herring Protectors in response to the Indigenous-led resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock in 2016. After helping fundraise and organize in solidarity, Kh’asheechtlaa wanted to turn their eyes locally to Sheet’ká. 

“In our very own backyards, we acknowledged a similar conflict with an extractive industry, the commercial harvest of herring,” the organization’s website states.

The grassroots group has held an annual Yaaw Koo.éex’ ever since, inviting anyone — whether community members, Board of Fisheries officials, or others — hoping to bring the discussion around protecting yaaw back into Łingít community spaces. 

“The hope,” she said, “is that people can get a sense of the spiritual, cultural and historical relationship that we have with the yaaw — and how important it is.”

As for the grey whales, this year, carcasses are once again washing up along the “California” coast for reasons still unknown, experts say. 

Researchers aren’t sure why the whales have traveled so far south this time of year, but some believe they may be searching for food. In the face of repeated die-offs, gáax’w may be more vital than ever to their survival — a rich but increasingly contested food source in waters shaped by both tradition and industry.

---

Reporting for this story was made possible in part through funding from the National Geographic Society.

Photos of whales and research activities collected under Alaska Whale Foundation’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Permit # 26663.

---

Editor’s note: This is a corrected story. A previous version incorrectly referenced the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act as state law; in fact it is federal law. We apologize for the error.