The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) announced the opening of Bristol Bay, Alaska’s fishery for 1 June, 2018, with a colossal forecast of more than 51 million sockeye salmon.
The prediction is 18 percent over the 10-year average of around 43 million reds in Bristol Bay, home to the world’s largest sockeye run. Richard Brenner, a salmon stock assessment biologist at the ADF&G and the lead author of the department’s statewide salmon prediction for 2018, said the department foresees a catch of around 37.5 million sockeyes in Bristol Bay alone.
“Our total commercial harvest for sockeye salmon is 39 million and change, with about 1.5 million of that being harvested in Southeast Alaska. But obviously the vast majority of that is Bristol Bay,” Brenner said.
The catch is surprisingly consistent with 2016 and 2017, both historically large seasons that came in right around 37.6 million fish. Biologists, however, are quick to point out that predicting the run in Bristol Bay is difficult and uncertain. The predicted harvest for last season, for example, was just 27.5 million, over 10-million shy of the final tally.
The last three seasons of very strong sockeye runs in Bristol Bay have come while other Alaska stocks – many of them in the Gulf of Alaska, on the other side of the Aleutian Islands – have seen declines, largely attributed to the warm water mass in the Pacific Ocean known as “The Blob.” Bristol Bay has been protected from The Blob, and biologists like ADF&G’s Forrest Bowers add that the fishery’s success is aided by good management as well as diverse, well-protected breeding grounds.
“Bristol Bay has a lot going for it. There are a lot of river systems and those rivers are pretty diverse, with a lot of different kinds of spawning habitat that create different life history characteristics in the various river systems,” Bowers said.
But while sockeye numbers are high, the prediction for Chinook salmon in Bristol Bay is again very low. This can present management challenges for biologists, who are sometimes forced to shut down rivers for Chinook escapement, meanwhile letting large numbers of sockeyes flood upriver.
Photo courtesy of Megan Potter
