Biologists from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) forecast a total run of 40.18 million sockeye in Bristol Bay, Alaska for the 2019 season, a run that would yield a potential harvest of more than 26 million fish.
It would represent a return to historical numbers for the fishery after three straight anomalous seasons of colossal harvests in Bristol Bay, the world’s biggest sockeye run.
“The theme is something like a return to normal. It’s still above the long-term average, but we’re definitely down off the sugar-high that we’ve seen over the last couple years,” Greg Buck, an area fisheries biologist for ADFG who produced the forecast, told SeafoodSource
Buck said very high returns on 2014 and 2015 brood-years have fueled the past two record-breaking seasons, but the evidence that the 2015 and 2016 brood-years will keep producing is mixed.
An encouraging development, according to Buck, is a prediction of 6.95 million fish in the Kvichak River, where managers have attempted to breathe life into struggling runs over the past years.
“There’s definitely some potential upside in the Kvichak. There could be a good cycle developing there, and this could be the year,” Buck said.
This season’s 62.3 million sockeye was the largest recorded run in the history of the fishery, bucking downward trends on salmon numbers across the state. The harvest was 41 million fish, and in 2016 and 2017 fishermen scooped up nearly 38 million fish per year.
Biologists don’t know why Bristol Bay runs have remained strong while other runs have flagged.
In recent years, ADFG forecasts have tended to be smaller than the runs. Last year, for example, biologists undershot by over 11 million fish with a prediction of 51 million sockeye.
The market for sockeye salmon has handled the consecutive seasons of large catches well, with ex-vessels prices ticking up year after year. Major processors paid a base rate of USD 0.50 (EUR 0.44) in 2015, which had climbed to around USD 1.25 (EUR 1.11) this year, with significant incentives for cold, floating and bled fish.
Photo courtesy of Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association
