June 11, 2026 — A stream of data more than a decade in the making is helping a team of Alaska researchers’ efforts to boost the health of the local salmon population and the bottom line of fishing trawlers.
A University of Alaska Fairbanks research team has translated a trove of data from a chinook salmon tagging program into a predictive model that could help reduce bycatch by fishing trawlers.
Chinook salmon range from the ocean’s surface to depths where trawl nets target groundfish species. The researchers’ model uses more than 700,000 data points between Southeast Alaska and the Bering Sea to predict how chinook will be distributed across the water column. With that information, trawlers can potentially adjust their operations to reduce inadvertent salmon catches.