Forage Fish Brochure - The Health of Oceans

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The Health of Oceans
Forage Fish 
Photo Credits: left: heron eating (E. Marshall
centre: surf smelt spawn  (R. de Graaf )
right: krill on Lasqueti beach  (B.  Dorner)
Map below - courtesy of A.  Sperling
front cover - images by B. Dorner except
salmon at Adams River -  by C. Haist
*Forage fish spawning beaches found so far by Lasqueti Island Forage Fish Team 
(LIFFT):
False Bay (Matheson Beach) - Pacific sandlance
Marshall Beach - Pacific sandlance
Sandy Cove - sandlance
Queen’s beach - surf smelt and Pacific sandlance
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What’s the problem?
Salmon, rock fish, birds, and marine mammals such as sea 
lions and seals, as well as people, all depend on small fish – 
called forage fish – for their food.
Forage fish include surf smelt, Pacific sandlance (needlefish), 
eulachon, herring and capelin.  These small feeder fish form 
the cornerstone of marine food webs, critical to the survival 
of fisheries and thousands of predators from fish, birds and 
marine mammals to people.
An adult Chinook salmon’s diet consists of 50% Pacific 
sandlance!
 Here on the coast of BC, we once had untold millions of 
herring to both feed us and all the other marine life we 
shared this fish with. Now, Qualicum Beach is one of the last 
commericially viable herring areas in the Salish Sea.  
Surf smelt are declining, archeological data show dramatic 
declines for eulachon, and capelin were extirpated from the 
Salish Sea in 1970’s.
Today, the populations of these critical small fish are only a 
fraction of levels prior to exploitation by European settlers and 
commercialized fisheries. As a result many of the birds, fish 
and mammals that rely on them are in precipitous decline. 
Why us, and why here?
On Lasqueti Island, as in the larger Salish Sea, surf smelt 
and Pacific sandlance lay their tiny eggs on our sand and 
gravel beaches - just below the high tide line. As they hatch 
and grow these young fish drift out, feeding on plankton just 
below the sea surface.
 
For the past two years the Lasqueti Island Forage Fish Team 
(LIFFT) has been surveying our beaches to find and learn 
about surf smelt and Pacific sandlance. There are now a 
number of beaches which have been positively identified as 
spawning beds for these forage fish! We are learning more 
about the specific species and time of year they spawn. 
Thankfully we still have undeveloped beaches that draw these 
tiny fish like magnets – where they lay their minuscule eggs 
in hopes that their offspring will survive. 
Healthy spawning beaches are essential for forage fish, for 
a healthy fishery and for the survival of thousands of larger 
predators from salmon and rockfish to birds and marine 
mammals.
background photo - herring spawn in Kwakume
photo Reg Moody

the perfect spawning beach  
Sand and gravel are naturally renewed 
on our beaches by the push and pull of 
waves and natural erosion. Unfortu-
nately seawalls and other ‘hard shore’ 
structures increase wave action, re-
move critical beach ma

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