Sitka’s spring herring fishery will be about 1,000 tons less than originally estimated, the Department of Fish & Game announced today.

The harvest limit for the herring fishery in Sitka Sound will be just over 16,000 tons. That’s about 7 percent lower than the preliminary harvest amount announced in December.

Herring management biologist Dave Gordon said the department revised the harvest level downward because sampling showed that the fish returning this year are smaller than last year. The revision is not unusual, he said.

“It seems like a lot, but the quota’s fairly large,” Gordon said. “So the change in tonnage may appear to some to be quite a bit, but percentage-wise, it’s nothing out of the norm.”

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