Alaska’s commercial wild salmon catch had exceeded 152.7 million fish by the end of week 32, according to the latest in-season harvest figures compiled by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G).
In terms of species, the catch to date comprised 50.9 million sockeye, 79.7 million pinks, 19.4 million chum, 2.4 million coho and 242,000 king salmon.
Regionally, 39.2 million fish have so far come from the Bristol Bay area, including 37.7 million sockeye and 1.4 million chum. The Nushagak District has been the main contributor to this catch with more than 13 million salmon to date, followed by the Egegik District and the Naknek-Kvichak District and with 11.9 million and 8.1 million salmon respectively.
The Cook Inlet fisheries have supplied almost 3.5 million salmon, including 2 million sockeye, 868,000 pinks, 351,000 chum, 222,000 coho and 8,000 kings. Prince William Sound’s commercial catch so far of 41.9 million salmon comprised almost 35 million pinks, 5.3 million chum, 1.4 million sockeye, 70,000 coho and 13,000 king salmon.
For the Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim Region, the catch has reached 1.4 million salmon, including more than 1.3 million chum.
In Southeast Alaska, the commercial salmon harvest stands at more than 27.3 million fish, including 18.1 million pinks, 7.1 million chum and 164,000 kings. Alaska’s Western region, meanwhile, has to date reported a commercial catch of 39.4 million salmon, including 25.7 million pinks, 9.4 million sockeye, 3.9 million chum and 18,000 kings.
Overall, the pink harvest has languished well behind previous recent odd year harvests, though last week and week 33 typically mark the peak of Alaska pink salmon fishing, said the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) in its most recent harvest update. In 2015, those two peak weeks produced 62 million pinks and accounted for 34 percent of the harvest.
While catching the 2013 or 2015 pink totals is probably not possible, ASMI said good harvests over this fortnight could still turn in a “decent” harvest volume. For context, the past 10 odd years averaged 137 million pinks, including harvests of 224 and 188 million in 2013 and 2015 respectively.
The institute added that globally, the pink salmon supply could be buoyed by larger Russian harvests. Through late July, Russian pink harvests were 155,279 metric tons (MT) and running 31 percent ahead of 2015. The Karaginsky sub-region has accounted for “an incredible” 88 percent of Russia's pink harvest while Sakhalin is experiencing extremely low pink harvests, it said. Russian pink harvests have been minimal outside of northeast Kamchatka, and the wholesale prices remain higher than most previous years.
Back in Alaska, ASMI said the sockeye harvest is now expected to finish slightly below last year after starting strong in Bristol Bay. Coho harvests continue to run well ahead of last year's pace, but a lot of fishing remains.
King salmon runs in Southeast Alaska have been even worse than expected and ADF&G has issued a non-retention order for the duration of the summer season, which means the remaining allocation of 31,000 treaty fish for SE trollers will not be harvested.
