January 28, 2019 — On the heels of the second-worst salmon season in the history of Alaska’s Copper River district, 2019 is estimated to see healthier returns.
The commercial sockeye salmon fishery in the central region of the US’ northernmost state is closely watched by US retailers and consumers as it is the first Alaska season annually to open and is accompanied by significant media coverage. Last year though, it quickly became apparent that there wasn’t much to see.
Despite an initial Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) that 942,000 sockeye would be caught in 2018– the range estimated between 536,000 to 1.4 million — only 44,318 sockeye were.
In 2019, ADF&G predicts a total Copper River sockeye harvest of 955,000, an estimate made within the range of 351,000 to 1.16m. The 10-year average harvest for the district is 1.25m sockeye, will includes 1.04m wild-caught fish.
“It’s a pretty decent forecast,” Stormy Haught, an ADF&G biologist based in Cordova, Alaska, told Undercurrent News. “But it definitely deserves some caution. For the Copper River last year we used this same method and over-forecast by over a million fish.”