Alaska fishermen holding breath on 2024 Bristol Bay king crab season opening, 2025 salmon forecast

Crab pots on a dock, with an Alaskan mountain in the distance
Crab pots on a dock in Dutch Harbor, Alaska | Photo courtesy of NOAA
6 Min

Alaska fishermen are waiting for final word on whether there will be a red king crab season in Bristol Bay this fall.

And with the first 2025 Alaska salmon season forecast showing grim results, fishermen across Alaska, where seafood represents an outsized portion of the state’s economy, are worried about the future of their livelihoods.

In mid-September, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council's (NPFMC) crab plan team recommended an upward revision of the acceptable biological catch of Bristol Bay red king crab for the 2024-2025 season, which is slated to begin in mid-October. The proposed ABC of just over 4,000 metric tons – following a positive assessment issued in September 2024 – will likely result in the council’s approval of the season opening for the second straight year. Last year, there was around a 975-MT total allowable catch set, after two straight years of the fishery being closed due to low biomass.

“The near-future outlook for the Bristol Bay red king crab stock ranges from a steady state to a declining trend,” Alaska Department of Fish and Game Researcher Katie Palof wrote in the assessment. “The closure of the directed fishery for seasons 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 appears to have allowed abundance of male and female crab to hold steady, with survey data observing only small increases in the overall population. Effects of fishery closures on recruitment are unknown due to the 6- to 7-year lag between spawning and crab recruitment into the assessment model. Current crab abundance is still low relative to the late 1970s, and without favorable environmental conditions, recovery to the high levels of the late 1970s is unlikely in the near future.”

That would be a bright spot in an otherwise bleak-looking near-term outlook for Alaska’s fisheries. NOAA scientists are recommending the Bering Sea snow crab fishery remain closed as its stock is still rebuilding after that population crashed in 2021, and Southeast Alaska’s red and blue king crab fisheries have been closed since 2017.

The salmon fishery is also facing foreboding prospects. The University of Washington’s Fisheries Research Institute released its 2025 Preliminary Preseason Forecast for the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fishery, predicting a run size of 49.6 million fish, down 18 percent from the 10-year average of 60.1 million sockeye. Its projected inshore harvest for 2025 is 32.4 million sockeye salmon, or roughly 185.3 million pounds of fish.

The total is nearly equivalent to the 20-year average, and taking into account a lower-than-average run in 2024, it suggests run sizes may be regressing back to the mean after several years of huge returns.

The UW-FRI forecast a smaller-than-average run in Bristol Bay in 2024 of 38.9 million fish and a harvest of 26.4 million sockeye, but the actual number for the total run was 51.6 million fish, with 31.6 million harvested. The UW-FRI prediction of an average fish weight of 5.5 pounds was off, as the average weight of 4.53 pounds was the smallest on record.

The small average fish size in Bristol Bay was primarily a result of the fact that around 80 percent of the returning sockeye spent two years growing out in the ocean rather than three years, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game Biologist Tim Sands.

The preliminary UW-FRI forecast is predicting 39 percent of the 2025 Bristol Bay run will be two-ocean-year sockeye, and 61 percent will be three-ocean-year sockeye, implying larger fish sizes are likely next year. UW-FRI will issue its formal preseason forecast in November 2024.

But Sands said there are other factors impacting Bristol Bay sockeye sizes – with climate change likely the biggest factor. The weight of Bristol Bay sockeye has declined 10 percent since the 1960s, according to a University of Washington study, which found similar decreases among Alaska’s Chinook, coho, and chum salmon.

Sands said fishermen who didn’t switch to smaller net-mesh sizes missed out on much of the catch this year.

“In my district they were very small, and the fishermen missed them. They went through their nets,” Sands told the Alaska Beacon.

Illegal fishing was also a problem in Bristol Bay this season, resulting in a three-day closure of fishing in the bay’s Egegik district.

Those issues were addressed by a report recently issued by NOAA's Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee investigating the state of the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea fisheries. The report, completed at the behest of U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo after a meeting in May with Alaska's congressional delegation, requested NOAA provide solutions to help the state’s seafood industry cope with its ongoing downturn, which some state officials have described as reaching a crisis situation.

The report, completed by NOAA Economist Stephen Kasperski, found Alaska suffered …


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