Russia’s salmon fishery overdelivered in 2019, but Russian fishermen shouldn’t expect the good run to continue in 2020, according to the latest prediction for next year’s run.
Initially, the Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO) predicted a total salmon catch of 461,000 metric tons for 2019. But nearly 500,000 metric tons (MT) of salmon was reported caught this year, the third-biggest result ever for an uneven year, after 2009 and 2011. This year’s catch is 41 percent higher than in 2017.
Of the entire catch, 378,000 MT was caught in the Kamchatka region, primarily in the Sea of Okhotsk, the heart of Russia’s salmon fishery. Much of this harvest was humpback salmon, also known as pink salmon.
Nevertheless, the 2019 total was lower than in 2018, a record-breaking year resulting in more than 676,000 MT being caught. And that season may have a more lasting impact on the fishery, as it now appears it caused a drop in population that will result in lower catches next year.
In September and October, a two-vessel expedition executed by the Pacific Fishery Scientific Research Center (TINRO) was conducted in the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk. They found a much lower count of pink salmon fingerlings in the Sea of Okhotsk – 554.8 million against again a typical count of 1 billion fingerlings for an even year. That portends a smaller salmon season coming in 2020, according to TINRO.
The result was not unexpected, as record stocks typically lead to an overflow of spawning grounds, which causes subsequent lower-yielding generations. It’s expected that next year’s salmon catch total will return to the levels of the early 2000s, when the annual catch averaged 280,000 MT from 2002 to 2010.
TINRO said it would release its final forecast after it conducts additional surveys in the spring of 2020, just before the season, which starts in early June.
Photo courtesy of Konstantin Baidin
