The commercial roe-herring fishery opened with a flourish over the weekend as the gillnet fleet took its share of what the federal government predicts to be “near-historic” returns to the Strait of Georgia.

Conservation groups are calling for the immediate closure of the herring fishery in the Strait of Georgia following the release of new federal government data showing a four-year population biomass decline of almost 60 per cent. “We’ve been systematically overfishing these stocks and the Gulf of Georgia fishery is the last one left,” Pacific Wild...