The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) is forecasting a robust all-species salmon harvest of over 190 million fish for the 2021 season.
The forecast is buoyed by a predicted catch of 124.2 million pink salmon, a species that returns in larger numbers during odd years. Even year or not, last season’s pink run was abysmal, with a harvest of just 60.7 million pinks statewide.
Southeast Alaska is expected to see a harvest of over 28 million fish, a welcome figure after a poor catch in the region of just 8.1 million pinks last season. According to the report, last season’s pink salmon harvest ranked 53rd out of the 58 seasons since 1962. The total salmon harvest in Southeast Alaska and Yakutat last season reached just 29 percent of the recent 10-year averages, and 36 percent of long-term averages.
Prince William Sound should see a strong pink harvest of nearly 55 million, up from 23 million last season, according to the ADFG forecast. The total salmon harvest in Prince William Sound last season was just 26.3 million fish, with numbers of sockeye, chum, coho, and chinook salmon far below long-term averages.
The Copper River sockeye run is forecast at just 1.3 million fish. While this is nearly 40 percent off the 10-year average, it would be an improvement over last season’s abysmal total catch.
“The Copper River had one of the weakest sockeye salmon runs on record, with minimal fishing opportunity and the third smallest commercial harvest in the past 50 years. The sockeye salmon commercial harvest of 102,269 fish was 92 percent less than the 10-year harvest average of 1.3 million fish. The commercial sockeye salmon season was open for 84 hours in 2020, compared to 648 hours fished in 2019,” the report said.
Bristol Bay, however, is set to drive a strong statewide harvest of 46.6 million sockeye salmon, which would be around 200,000 more sockeye caught than last season. ADFG puts the 2021 Bristol Bay harvest at 34.5 million sockeye. If it holds, it would add to a string of seven straight years of historically large sockeye harvests that have picked up the slack for declining stocks elsewhere in Alaska and in Russia and Canada.
Bristol Bay harvests in recent years have often been larger than ADFG’s preseason projections, a trend that held true last season.
“The 2020 commercial inshore harvest of 39.6 million sockeye salmon was 14 percent more than the 34.6 million preseason forecast and is the fifth-largest on record,” the report said. “The 2020 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run was 25 percent larger than the preseason inshore forecast of 46.6 million fish.”
Last season’s all-species salmon run of 58.3 million in Bristol Bay was the fourth-largest on record, but there was little help from chinook salmon, with the harvest of just over 10,000 kings in Bristol Bay marking a record low.
Despite another strong showing from Bristol Bay, last season’s salmon run was a disappointment overall, with the all-species salmon harvest of 118.3 million fish coming in well short of ADFG’s preseason forecast of 132.7 million fish.
Photo courtesy of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association
