August 20, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Fraser River sockeye season has netted landings of about 600,000 sockeye in the U.S. and 735,000 sockeye in Canada as of early this week. In Canada there have been three separate openings and an updated announcement on openings just this week, indicating a ramping up of a fishery that will peak in the coming few weeks.
This year’s return to the Fraser is estimated to be 14 million sockeye, within a wide range of possibilities. The return is made up of four distinct runs: Early Stuart, Early Summer, Summer, and Late runs. More than half — about 7.4 milion sockeyes — are estimated to make up this year’s Late run.
Once escapement, test fishing, and other management adjustments are taken off the total return, the TAC is calculated, currently at 6.2 million sockeye. Of that, the U.S.’s share is 1.02 million sockeye.
So with the landings as of last Tuesday, the U.S. season is about half over. For Canada, the bulk of the return is still ahead.
Mike LaPoint, chief biologist for the Pacific Salmon Commission, said stock assessments of the four different runs are being made as they come in. This week, assessments of Early Summer and Summer-run sockeye abundance are being calculated as test fishing results and data on age, origin, and other components of the different populations are analyzed. Updated run-size estimates could be available as early as later today, after this afternoon’s meeting of the Fraser River Panel.
“It is important to note that that TAC continually changes through the season as data on abundance, etc. are updated,” LaPoint said. “So far this season, the only change has been to the Early Stuart Run size – pre-season was 84,000, now 125,000. All other stock groups are being actively assessed right now and so far no changes from pre-season.”
The Fraser has seen three years in a row of low sockeye returns. “2016 was actually the lowest return since we started to keep records in 1892, about 700,000 fish,” Lapointe told Undercurrent News last month.
Fraser sockeye, for the most part, are four year fish. The 2014 return was over 20 million sockeye. While the returning salmon, and the subset of successful spawners in the return, is important, more focus in recent years has been on conditions the salmon face after that. Sockeye spend a year in the lake, then outmigrate as juveniles through the Fraser basin, and go north for a few years of feeding in the Gulf of Alaska before returning. In 2016-17, when these young salmon were feeding, temperatures in the Gulf were still above average from the 2014-16 warm water event referred to as The Blob.
Conditions in the Fraser River itself, according to Tuesday’s announcement from the Fraser River Panel, continue to show low volume of water and higher temperatures than historically normal, although in recent years these numbers have been similar.
“On August 13, the Fraser River water discharge at Hope was approximately 2,801 cms, which is approximately 20% below average for this date. The temperature of the Fraser River at Qualark Creek on August 13 was 19.5 degrees C, which is 1.5 degrees C above average for this date. Fraser River water temperatures are forecast to decrease to slightly to 18.9 degrees C over the next few days.
“Sustained water temperatures in this range can cause severe stress to migrating sockeye and may lead to significant en route mortality. Migration conditions for Fraser sockeye will be monitored closely over the next several weeks and appropriate management actions will be taken,” the announcement read.
This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.