September 3, 2019 — Applications should now be in the hands of Alaska salmon fishermen and processors hurt by the 2016 pink salmon fishery failure.
NOAA Fisheries last month approved USD 56.3 million (EUR 51 million) in relief funds at Kodiak, Prince William Sound, Chignik, Lower Cook Inlet, South Alaska Peninsula, Southeast Alaska, and Yakutat.
August 28, 2019 — Applications should now be in the hands of Alaska salmon fishermen and processors hurt by the 2016 pink salmon fishery failure.
NOAA Fisheries last month approved $56.3 million in relief funds at Kodiak, Prince William Sound, Chignik, Lower Cook Inlet, South Alaska Peninsula, Southeast Alaska, and Yakutat.
Funds are being distributed by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC).
Salmon permit holders who show losses from the pink bust will split $31.8 million based on average dockside values over even years from 2006 to 2014.
August 20, 2019 — Alaska has been in the throes of an unprecedented heat wave this summer, and the heat stress is killing salmon in large numbers.
Scientists have observed die-offs of several varieties of Alaskan salmon, including sockeye, chum and pink salmon.
Stephanie Quinn-Davidson, director of the Yukon Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, told CNN she took a group of scientists on an expedition along Alaska’s Koyokuk River at the end of July, after locals alerted her to salmon die-offs on the stream.
She and the other scientists counted 850 dead unspawned salmon on that expedition, although they estimated the total was likely four to 10 times larger.
They looked for signs of lesions, parasites and infections, but came up empty. Nearly all the salmon they found had “beautiful eggs still inside them,” she said. Because the die-off coincided with the heat wave, they concluded that heat stress was the cause of the mass deaths.
August 13, 2019 — Some scientists who study the food web in North Pacific Ocean waters off the US state of Alaska are beginning to fear that hatchery-raised pink salmon are posing overly stiff competition to sockeye when it comes to their common food source, zooplankton, the Associated Press reported.
The news service quoted biological oceanographer Sonia Batten who has studied zooplankton abundance and found it to wax and wane, which she attributed to the odd- and even-year cycle of pink salmon.
“The only thing that we have in this whole area with an up and down, alternating-year pattern is pink salmon,” Batten, who works for Canada’s Marine Biological Association, said.
June 12, 2019 — Alaska fishermen are still awaiting disaster relief funds for the 2016 pink salmon run failure that was the worst in 40 years.
Congress approved $56 million that year for Alaska fishermen, processors and communities hurt by the fishery flop in three Alaska regions: Kodiak, Prince William Sound and Lower Cook Inlet.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game and National Marine Fisheries Service finalized plans and procedures for payouts last August. Since then, the paper push has stalled on various federal agency desks.
NMFS missed a promised June 1 sign off deadline and now says the funds will be released on the first of July, according to Rep. Louise Stutes of Kodiak, who has been tracking the progress.
“It affects all the cannery workers all the processors, all the businesses in the community,” she said. “This has a big trickle-down effect.”
April 10, 2019 — Alaska fishermen could catch 85 percent more salmon this year (nearly a hundred million more) if state forecasts hold true.
That’s good news for fishermen in many Gulf of Alaska regions who in 2018 suffered some of the worst catches in 50 years.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is predicting a total salmon catch of 213.2 million fish for 2019, compared to about 116 million salmon last year. The increase comes from expectations of another big haul of sockeyes, increases in pinks and a possible record catch of chum salmon.
The harvest breakdown calls for 112,000 chinook salmon in areas outside of Southeast Alaska. The catch for the Southeast troll fleet, which is determined by a treaty with Canada, will be 101,300 kings, a 5,600-fish increase.
Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News
April 3, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s salmon harvest forecast for the season is 213.2 million fish, some 97.5 million more than last year’s landings of 116 million salmon. The forecast was released late last week.
The increase is mostly due to larger harvests of pink and chum salmon compared to 2018. Harvest levels include:
112,000 Chinook salmon outside Southeast Alaska, 41.7 million sockeye, 4.6 million coho, 137.8 million pink, and 29.0 million chum salmon.
Odd-year returns of pink salmon have traditionally been higher than even-year returns, and this year is no exception. What is different, though, is the high uncertainty attached to this pink forecast, which is almost 100 million more pinks than 2018.
“We note that—except for Southeast Alaska—pink salmon forecasts are generally based on average returns from previous brood years,” notes management biologists who produced the report released last week. “The pink salmon run forecast for 2019 is partly an artifact of this method; there is a great deal of uncertainty in predicting pink salmon returns,” they wrote.
Compared to last year, there will be 8.9 million fewer sockeye or red salmon; 900,000 more coho salmon, and 8.7 million more chum salmon.
If realized, the projected commercial chum salmon harvest would be the largest on record for Alaska.
The phenomenal success in recent years of chum salmon returns in Southeast, Prince William Sound, Norton Sound, and Southcentral Alaska appears now to be a trend.
Very low expected harvests of pink salmon in Southeast Alaska may be offset by higher projected harvests in Prince William Sound. The point estimate for landings of pink salmon in SE Alaska is 18 million. In Prince William Sound nearly 11 million wild pinks and 22 million hatchery pinks are expected to be harvested with another several million coming from the Valdez Fisheries Development Assn.
Sockeye harvest in the Copper River, scheduled to begin in May, are expected to be just under 1 million fish, at 955,000 sockeye. Those red salmon will be augmented by a bumper year at the Coghill River weir of nearly half a million sockeyes, much larger than historical averages.
A modest 3 million sockeyes are expected to be harvested this year in the Upper Cook Inlet.
Kitoi Bay pink harvest is projected at 6.6 million fish.
A total of 40.18 million sockeye salmon are expected to return to Bristol Bay in 2019. This is 10% smaller than the most recent 10-year average of Bristol Bay total runs (44.4 million), and 16% greater than the long-term (1963–2018) average of 34.2 million.
The run forecast for each district and landings prediction is as follows:
Run: 16.12 million to Naknek-Kvichak District (6.95 million to the Kvichak river, 3.97 million to the Alagnak river, and 5.21 million to the Naknek river) for a projected harvest of 7.84 million sockeyes;
9.07 million to the Egegik District with harvest projections up to 7.04 million reds;
3.46 million to the Ugashik District or harvest prediction of 2.38 million;
10.38 million to the Nushagak District (4.62 million to the Wood river, 4.18 million to the Nushagak river, and 1.58 million to the Igushik river) and a total harvest prediction of 7.97 million reds; and
1.15 million to the Togiak District which translates to 870,000 reds.
This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
March 28, 2019 — After five weeks at sea, a team of 21 scientists from five countries returned Monday with some surprising findings about the mysterious lives of salmon in the Pacific Ocean, according to Laurie Weitkamp, a salmon biologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Newport, Oregon.
“It was quite an experience,” said Weitkamp, one of three chief scientists aboard the Russian research vessel Professor Kaganovsky.
The expedition was part of activities associated with the International Year of the Salmon and was meant to look at how salmon fare in the open ocean. Among the surprises that emerged from the cruise was the relatively small number of pink salmon. Pinks, the most abundant salmon in the Pacific Ocean, normally make up about half of all the salmon in the region. Yet during the expedition — which covered some 345,000 square miles — pink salmon made up only about 10 percent of the salmon caught in the researchers’ nets.
“We kept asking, ‘Where are the pinks? Why aren’t you here?’” Weitkamp recalled.
March 21, 2019 — A research project by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game looking at chum and pink salmon runs in Southeast Alaska and Prince William Sound is expanding to help biologists understand the interplay between wild runs and hatchery strays. There is concern that hatchery fish could alter the genetics of wild populations, posing a threat to their survival.
Homer-based Fish and Game biologists Glenn Hollowell and Ted Otis started tracking hatchery fish found in wild streams around Kachemak Bay in 2014. That was around the time when Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association’s Tutka Bay Lagoon Hatchery reopened after several years.
They wanted to examine how well the hatchery pink salmon homed back to the Kachemak Bay facility, but they found something strange: salmon from other hatcheries.
“When we initially started doing this, we were not anticipating finding any Prince William Sound fish in our samples whatsoever. It was just not something we even considered,” Hollowell explained. “We were very surprised to find that a number of our streams had very significant, double-digit numbers (of Prince William Sound hatchery fish) in 2014.”
The Prince William Sound pinks keep showing up each year, and just the idea that hatchery pinks could stray so far has heated up a dispute over the potential harm on wild runs — namely, whether they could alter the genetics of wild populations in a way that would threaten their survival rate.
November 29, 2018 — Next summer may be a slow one for Southeast and Bristol Bay salmon fishermen.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s annual salmon forecasts for the Southeast and Bristol Bay regions predict weaker runs for the 2019 season. In Southeast’s case, it’s the pink salmon predicted to come up short compared to recent averages; in Bristol Bay, it’s the sockeye.
About 18 million pink salmon are predicted to be harvested in Southeast Alaska in 2019, placing the run in the weak range, or between 20 percent and 40 percent of the 59-year average in the history of the fishery. The forecasted number is about half the recent 10-year average of 36 million pinks, according to the ADFG forecast. If the forecast holds true, it will be the lowest odd-year harvest since 1987.
The low number of juveniles in 2018 was unexpected, as the previous year’s escapements met goals.
“This indicates that brood year 2017 pink salmon likely experienced poor freshwater and/or early marine survival,” according to the forecast.