July 21, 2021 — The total numbers since July 19 for catch and escapement have not yet been summed, but when they are it’s all but certain that Bristol Bay’s 2018 all-time record of 62.95 million sockeyes will be shattered—the second time in four years. Catch and escapement numbers in the Bay have been kept since 1893.
As of July 19, and poised to be updated later today, Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s total run number is 62.8 million sockeye.
July 20, 2021 — Commercial net fishing for salmon in Southeast is off to a poor start in much of the region. Returns for most species are not meeting forecasts, which weren’t very high in the first place.
With some exceptions, it hasn’t been a very encouraging start to the salmon season.
“I guess for both net fisheries, gillnet and seine, we’re looking at poor chum salmon catches and poor sockeye catches and yet to be determined for pink salmon,” said Troy Thynes, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s management coordinator for commercial fisheries in the region.
By the middle of July, the region’s pink salmon catch neared 600,000 fish, still a far cry from the pre-season forecast of 28 million humpies, with the bulk of the season still to come. Thynes explained indicators have been mixed on whether returns later this summer will meet that, with some up and down fishing in southern Southeast near Ketchikan.
“There was some good pink catches that showed up in lower Clarence (Strait) a couple weeks ago, and then the pink catches kind of fell off,” he said. “And then they picked up again here this last opening in districts one and two. We are seeing a higher percent males than what we normally see this time of year, which is generally indicates that the run is coming in a little bit later than normal, and we have been seeing a low average weight on the pink salmon as well.”
Smaller sizes for individual fish can sometimes signal a larger overall return, and managers are hopeful the 28 million harvest forecast for the region is still a possibility. They’ll know more in the next few weeks, heading into what’s normally the peak of the pink season.
July 19, 2021 — The European green crab might be small, but it can destroy vital habitats for animals all along the food chain. It’s already costing New England shellfisheries million of dollars.
In July 2020, green crab were found in Haida Gwaii, the closest they’ve ever been to Alaska. With the help of volunteers, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game hopes to stay one step ahead of the invasive species.
At low tide at Sandy Beach in Petersburg, Sunny Rice and a group of volunteers walked toward a crab trap — on the lookout for European green crab.
Green crab are small but mighty, measuring around 3 or 4 inches wide. Their shells are a dark, greenish-brown shell with yellow spots, with five triangular points on either side of the eyes.
To check whether the crabs have made it this far north, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has asked volunteer groups to set up traps all over Southeast. Rice is with the Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program and wanted to get involved. She and a group of high school students with the Petersburg Indian Association’s natural resource management program set six traps at Sandy Beach and two at Hammer Slough.
July 13, 2021 — “Unprecedented” is how fishery managers are describing sockeye catches at Bristol Bay, which topped 1 million fish for seven days straight at the Nushagak district last week and neared the 2 million mark on several days.
By July 9, Alaska’s statewide sockeye salmon catch was approaching 32 million, of which more than 25 million came from Bristol Bay. The only other region getting good sockeye catches was the Alaska Peninsula, where nearly 4.6 million reds were landed so far.
The Alaska Peninsula also was far ahead of all other regions for pink salmon catches with over 3.3 million taken out of a total statewide tally of just over 5.4 million so far.
Pink salmon run in distinct two year cycles with odd years being stronger, and the preseason forecast calls for a total Alaska harvest of 124.2 million pinks this summer.
The timing for peak pink harvests is still several weeks away; likewise for chums, and most cohos will arrive in mid-August.
Alaska salmon managers are projecting the 2021 statewide salmon catch to top 190 million fish, a 61% increase over last year’s take of about 118 million salmon. By July 9, the statewide catch for all species had topped 41 million fish.
July 7, 2021 — Alaska’s Bristol Bay salmon season is off to a strong start in what is expected to be another harvest hovering around all-time highs for both catch and value in the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.
Fish were already pouring in to at least two of Bristol Bay’s four major river systems. As of July 1, the bay had produced 9.02 million commercial sockeye landings — 46 percent above the five-year average — on a preseason prediction of more than 36 million sockeye, according to area biologist Tim Sands with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
By Tuesday, July 6, that total was above 14 million sockeye.
While early returns look good, test fishing indicates the run should sustain for a relatively long period of time, which should help the fishery avoid bottlenecks in fishing and processing.
Last season’s compressed run, coupled with covid-19 complications, strained Bristol Bay’s fishermen and processors. The Bristol Bay fishery also slogged through the pandemic last season with a disappointing base price of just $0.75, but got early, unexpected news that Peter Pan Seafoods will pay a base price of $1.10.
July 6, 2021 — Commercial Dungeness crabbers will have a full two-month summer and two-month fall season in most of the region, based on the first week’s catch.
The 2021 Southeast season isn’t off to as strong a start as last year. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game reports the preliminary catch estimate from the first week is around 711,000 pounds, landed by 163 permit holders. Those numbers are expected to increase as more landings are reported. Nevertheless, that’s under half of the bumper crop harvested in 2020. Last year saw a first-week catch of around 1.5 million pounds and the full season harvest went on to be the second highest on record, 6.7 million pounds.
Based on that first week catch, Fish and Game estimates this year’s total catch will wind up around 3.4 million pounds. That’s well above the threshold to allow a full season. Fishing time’s been shortened only a few times in the past two decades, because of a weak catch or poor quality crab.
June 30, 2021 — Early indicators are pointing to yet another strong year in the massive Bristol Bay sockeye fishery, which is contrasted against the continued struggles in many of the state’s other large salmon fisheries.
Just more than 3.2 million sockeye had been harvested through June 27, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game figures, with the Nushagak District accounting for more than half of the catch so far at nearly 1.7 million fish. The 3.2 million-fish harvest to-date this year is between the comparable totals for recent years; 1.2 million sockeye were harvested through June 27 last year, while more than 4.4 million were caught by the same day in 2019.
With sockeye harvests of more than 40 million fish and total runs greater than 56 million sockeye, both of the last two years have been among the most productive in the history of the Bristol Bay fishery.
Dillingham Area Management Biologist Tim Sands said early June 29 that he’s confident there are a lot of fish still making their way to the head of Bristol Bay based on catches in the Port Moller test fishery.
He noted that returns to the Egegik River down the Alaska Peninsula have been particularly strong, with a harvest of more than 1.2 million fish and a total return estimated at more than 1.7 million sockeye through June 27, several-fold more than last year in each category.
June 25, 2021 — A new smartphone app hit the market last week (6-18-21), with the potential to transform the debate over Alaska’s ocean resources.
“Skipper Science” will allow users along Alaska’s entire coastline to contribute observations about changes in fish and animal populations, which can then be collected and quantified as data for Alaska’s science-based resource management.
Anywhere the Alaska Board of Fisheries meets, there is always a certain amount of frustration among some of those who testify, because their years of experience — sometimes over many generations — doesn’t seem to carry much weight in management decisions, which tend to be driven by data.
In Sitka this is particularly acute around herring season, where subsistence harvesters have noted drastic declines in the abundance of the species over many decades, while 40-odd years of data collection by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game suggests everything is okay.
Skipper Science was created for exactly this purpose. Developed by the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, it’s a way for Alaska’s harvesters and managers to at least speak the same language.
“How do we take what has historically been called anecdotal and create some structure around it that is rigorous, has scientific repeatability?” asks Lauren Divine. She’s the Director of Ecosystem Conservation for the Aleut Community of St. Paul, the tribal government of St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea.
June 24, 2021 — If Alaska state leaders can’t resolve an impasse over the budget, large swaths of state government will shut down in July. That could include Alaska’s lucrative summer salmon fisheries, which is causing concern across coastal communities.
Southeast Alaska’s summer salmon troll fishery opens July 1. That’s the same day nearly 15,000 state workers could be out of work. Among those is Grant Hagerman, a state fisheries biologist managing the fishery from Sitka.
“We’re planning not to be here on July 1 unless we hear differently,” Hagerman says. “And with that, that summer fishery does not commence.”
Many of Alaska’s fisheries are operated by emergency order. That means fisheries open and close based on real-time data and biologists like Hagerman’s professional judgment. But he’s not part of the special class of state employees that would keep their jobs even in the shutdown — public safety or public health workers.
“You would think that we would have had a message, maybe from administration, just saying ‘Here are the exempt or partially exempt or whatever job classes that could remain open,’ but we didn’t get anything like that. I think it’s just pink slips across the board if they don’t pass so just — it’s really scary, you know, not just for us losing our jobs, but I mean, we manage a fishery with 1,000 permit holders and Southeast so it affects a lot of people.” Hagerman adds: “But I have faith that they’ll get something agreed to.”
June 24, 2021 — Crab has been one of the hottest commodities since the COVID-19 pandemic forced people in 2020 to buy and cook seafood at home, and demand is even higher this year.
Crab is now perceived as being more affordable when compared to the cost to enjoy it at restaurants, said global seafood supplier Tradex, and prices continue to soar.
That’s how it’s playing out for Dungeness crab at Kodiak and hopefully, at Southeast Alaska where the summer fishery got underway on June 15.
Kodiak’s fishery opened on May 1 and 76,499 pounds have been landed so far by just eight boats, compared to 29 last year. The Kodiak price this season was reported as high as $4.25 per pound for the crab that weigh just more than two pounds on average. That compares to a 2020 price of $1.85 for a catch of nearly 3 million pounds, the highest in 30 years, with a fishery value of nearly $5.3 million.
The pulls are skimpy though, averaging just two crab per pot. Kodiak’s Dungeness stocks are very cyclical and the fishery could be tapping out the tail end of a peak. Managers say this summer should tell the tale.