According to government sources, the Pacific herring fishery collapsed in the year 1993, and is slowly recovering to commercial viability in several North American stock areas.

This species is capable of rapid vertical motion, due to the existence of a complex nerve receptor system design that connects to the gas bladder.

Adult males and females make their way from the open ocean to bays and coves around November or December, although in the far north of the range, these dates may be somewhat later.

Conditions that trigger spawning are not altogether clear, but after spending weeks congregating in the deeper channels, both males and females will begin to enter shallower inter-tidal or sub-tidal waters.

The precise staging of spawning is not understood, although some researchers suggest the male initiates the process by release of milt, which has a pheromone that stimulates the female to begin oviposition.

[7] The fertilized spherical eggs, measuring 1.2 to 1.5 millimeters in diameter, incubate for approximately ten days in estuarine waters that are about 10 degrees Celsius.

[23] Since it began the reduction in 1882 until around 1917, the business was a practical monopoly of the North West Trading Company which established its processing plant at Killisnoo, Alaska.

[c][27] A similar shift took from the defunct reduction fishing took place in Canada: after the herring population recovered somewhat, a Canadian roe fishery industry sprang up in 1971 to cater to the Japanese market.[32][d]).

A commercially viable product demands the eggs to be "ripe", or swollen to the right size, which only occurs within a few days of spawning, and there is a narrow window for the catch.

[m] So that in wild foraging surged at Craig/Klawock 1963, burgeoned in Sitka in 1964, and at a third site at Hydaburg in 1966 were harvesting in southeast Alaska:[55] overfilling their 250 tons quota in 1966.

[58] In 1960 and 1961 "open-pounds", stocked with kelp to lure herring egg-laying, were operated in the town of Craig, on Prince of Wales Island, probably for the first time in Alaska.

[60][i] During the shortage, an enterprising operator experimented with transplanting "unused" kelp from remoter areas into kelp-depleted spawning grounds, or into eelgrass territory.

[61] The "impoundments" or "closed ponds" consisted of a square (wooden) frame holding a pocket of "suspended webbing" as enclosure space.

[66] On April 2, 2007, the Juneau group of the Sierra Club submitted a petition to list Pacific herring in the Lynn Canal, Alaska, area as a threatened or endangered distinct population segment under the criteria of the U.S.

[70] There is also a lower-grade substitute[73] called shio kazunoko (味付け数の子, 'dried kazunko'),[34] made from Atlantic herring roe (which is considered a softer or "less crunchy" in texture).

[34][35][71] [o] The roe is eaten mostly as the New Year's fare,[74] called osechi, consisting of an assortment of symbolically propitious foods, with herring representing fertility (production of many children).

[75][76] Schroeder, Robert F.; Kookesh, Matthew (January 1990), The Subsistence Harvest of Herring Eggs in Sitka Sound, 1989 (PDF), Technical Paper No.