The Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADFG) predicts a run of nearly 49 million sockeye salmon for the 2020 season in Bristol Bay, Alaska.
That total represents a robust figure that would be about 6 percent over the ten-year average of 46 million fish and nearly 30 percent over long-term averages. But, if met, the forecast would also translate to a downturn from recent record-breaking runs, which saw an all-time high of 62.3 million sockeye in the fishery in 2018.
Last season, fisherman caught over 43 million sockeye, the second-largest catch in the Bristol Bay’s history. If ADFG’s forecast holds for 2020, the run would allow for a harvest of around 35 million sockeye. Forecasts are inherently uncertain, however, and have tended to come up short, especially over the past several seasons of large runs.
“Since 2001, our forecasts have, on average, under-forecast the run by 14 percent and have ranged from 44 percent below the actual run in 2014 to 19 percent above the actual run in 2011. Forecasted harvests had a mean absolute percent error of 14 percent since 2001,” the ADFG report said.
That prediction puts the margin of error between 36 to 61 million fish, which means 2020 in Bristol Bay could see a drop to long-term averages, or could again rise to the stratospheric numbers seen over the past few seasons.
Most observers think the warm water and air temperatures that caused die-offs in several river systems in 2019 will probably not have any immediate negative impact on the upcoming run. Tim Sands, ADFG’s area manager for the Nushagak District, told SeafoodSource that dry weather – which caused low water levels in spawning streams – may have affected some fish, but he was not sounding alarm bells.
“I think that kind of thing happens every year and there’s some natural variation from that. I’m not particularly concerned about it,” Sands said.
He added that if the dry weather did have an impact on the spawn, it will be felt a few years down the line.
“The fish spawning this year, those fish will come back in four or five years, and that’s the real test,” Sands said. “So these warm temperatures that we saw would have an effect a few years down the road. I guess there could have been mortality with the juvenile fish that were rearing this year, but it seems unlikely to me. In fact, some people speculate that with the warm weather there was more plankton available and maybe the fish did better, so maybe there was improved survival.”
The Naknek-Kvichak District is expected to have the biggest run in 2020, with nearly 20 million fish, with 12.63 million in the Nushagak District, 10.75 million in Egegik, and around 4.5 million sockeye in Ugashik.
Photo courtesy of 907Shots/Shutterstock
