Anticipating Silver | Preparing for the Herring Spawn.

Tem lhawt in Squamish means time of the herring. This is our word for March. It's an important time of the year, it's the arrival of fresh herring roe to the shorelines of west-coast BC. It marks the coming spring. And when the herring spawn, their roe feeds the entire food chain (including us big land animals). Tem lhawt is a time of celebration. For a long time, the slhawt did not return to our waters, but they've slowly been coming back, and for the past few years our Squamish community has been able to celebrate tem lhawt, time of the herring.

To understand the significance of the return of the herring, we must first go back to the past. To when the herring were abundant in our Átl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound waters.

Herring are a small oily fish. Unassuming at first glance, ranging from 9-13 inches in length, with a bluish-green back and silver-white bellies, but an essential keystone species in our waters.

My first introduction to herring was in the north. Where I would spend time with my family where they live in Masset, Haida Gwaii.

Up there, they call herring roe, k'aaw. My grandma made me eat all sorts of weird things from the sea, but k'aaw... k'aaw was so tasty! The herring spawn in huge blooms, clumping onto kelp, seaweeds, eelgrass, layers and layers of tiny little eggs blanketing coastlines.

You can collect the kelp which have thick mats of roe attached on either side of the kelp. My family cuts it up into squares, flash boil it, and put either butter or soy sauce on it. Even as a child, I remember it being delicious with an interesting crunchy texture.

When I would go home to Squamish, I just assumed we didn't have herring here. Now I understand why that has been the case for so long.

Herring need soft and safe places to spawn; they like eel grass, kelps and seaweeds. We can create kelp forests for them by transplanting kelp into their spawning waters; but, to provide even more surface area, and a bit of shade, hemlock boughs can be removed from trees and placed in the water. These boughs will be held together traditionally with cedar rope, and a buoywould be made using deer bladder.

Herring will coat the hemlock in their eggs. The boughs can then be harvested, the roe eaten as a delicacy. Roe will also be dried to preserve for feasting and potlatch. Roe can also be mixed with pigments to create paint.

Traditionally the majority of these boughs will remain in the water, they will hatch and this will strengthen the pacific herring population. When herring hatch out of their eggs it aligns with the young salmon transitioning from freshwater to saltwater; herring are one of the salmon's first food sources. The two salmon they are most important to is Chinook and Coho.

When herring populations are strengthened, salmon populations are strengthened. Salmon are a well known keystone species, essential for the health, balance, and stability of the ecosystems around them. Feeding large animals in the ocean, and on land. When salmon are eaten and their carcasses brought up onto land and into forests, they decay, providing essential nutrients for our plants and trees.

Herring are a key indicator of health of Pacific salmon, as well as orcas, humpbacks, and many sea birds.

When herring spawn, the entire food chain eats.

Stanley Park once had the largest Pacific Herring spawning site in our Pacific Northwest. This land also had large and consistent salmon spawning. Neither fish spawn in these waters anymore due to: the removal of Indigenous people and their land management, the runoff pollution from a new and large city, as well as a busy marina with modern day boats. Since European settlement in Coast Salish territory the salmon have rapidly decreased in numbers. Major contributions to this include: the building of the CPR, agriculture, and forestry. Another major issue is the expanding farmed salmon industry. The farmed salmon transfer lice and disease to the wild salmon. This is further harming the already dwindling numbers.

For over a hundred years, our Átl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound waters were polluted by industrial waste, ravaged by overfishing; and, spawning sites were destroyed and altered by human development.

Now, the Átl’ka7tsem is a protected biosphere, it's illegal to dump industrial waste, slowly but surely our waters are recovering.

In 2019, surveys were done, and divers documented herring spawning. Herring have returned to our waters!

My little sister, who goes to the cultural St'a7mes school in Squamish, where she learns and practices her culture daily, came home from school and told us what she did that day.

She said, very nonchalantly: "We skinned a deer at school today, but it's okay, because we used everyyy part of it, even the stomach. You clean it out and you blow air into it, then attach it to the hemlock branches and you lay them in the water. It's hard for the herring to spawn because there's nothing for them to lay their eggs on, so we help them."

This was when she was in Kindergarten.

That first year, our menmen (children) laid hemlock boughs in the water, and for the first time in over a hundred years, our people witnessed the herring return. The tem lhawt ceremony happens every year now. And our people continue to lay hemlock in the water, and the herring keep coming back in bigger and bigger numbers, due to our intervention.

My sister gets to take part every year, and she says her favourite part of the herring ceremony is being able to spend time with her friends and family while they lay the hemlock boughs.

I had not considered the importance of the slhawt until my little sister came home from school that day, full of knowledge and teachings. I learned new things that day, and started to look at those little herring eggs in a new light.

Now, I see the work of laying hemlock branches in the water for what it is. It's the continuation of thousands of years of care our people have for the Herring nation.

"The teachers always say it at school," she said, when I brought up that our people have laid hemlock boughs in the water for thousands of years. "That we always need to make sure that we follow our traditions."

To her, it is normal.

We've been laying hemlock in the waters for thousands of years, and will continue to do so.