Alaska’s Copper River salmon fishery yielded 94,855 sockeye and 691 kings on Monday’s 12-hour opening, bringing the total catch through this season’s first four openers to just over 300,000 sockeye and nearly 4,000 kings.
The harvest kicked off on 14 May.
Through last season’s first four openers, the fishery produced less than 119,000 sockeye and nearly 6,200 kings.
This season, Copper River fishermen are projected to land more than 509,000 sockeye and 30,725 kings. Last season, they managed 321,000 sockeye and 11,500 kings.
The fifth opener began at 7 a.m. Thursday and will last 36 hours, unlike the previous four 12-hour openers.
On opening day, processors paid fishermen USD 5.30 (EUR 3.84) a pound for kings and USD 3.50 (EUR 2.53) for reds, and ex-vessel prices have dropped gradually since then.
The Copper River run marks the unofficial start of Alaska’s summer salmon season.
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