Alaska’s preliminary wild salmon forecast has reached 104 million fish, confirmed the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG), but pink salmon catches have so far proved slow with some stakeholders suggesting 2016 could deliver the worst harvest in four decades.
Through to 26 August, the total preliminary catch amounted to 52.5 million sockeye, 36.3 million pink, 13 million chum, 2.5 million coho, and 373,000 king salmon.
Pinks are Alaska’s highest volume salmon fishery, but this year the current statewide harvest is well short of the preseason forecast of 90 million. In 2015, Alaska landed 190 million pinks. According to local reports, the pink season could be declared a disaster, which may lead fishermen to receive financial relief.
ADFG has highlighted that the warm sea surface temperatures that have persisted throughout the Gulf of Alaska since 2013 have caused uncertainty, while biologists have said the pink salmon that went to sea in 2014 returned in numbers well below expectation in 2015, particularly in the southern half of the region, and pink salmon that went to sea in 2015, and were set to return in 2016, experienced similar above-average sea surface temperatures.
The preseason forecast for Alaska’s salmon catch was 161 million fish, down 40 percent from the 2015 harvest of 268 million fish because of the anticipated drop of 100 million pinks.
The species tends to follow a two-year cycle in which odd-numbered years see the biggest returns.
With regards to the state’s other salmon species, the 2016 forecasts for sockeye, coho and chum were 48 million, 4.4 million and 19 million fish, respectively. For king salmon, a catch of 99,000 fish was projected for all areas except the Southeast, where the harvest is determined according to Pacific Treaty agreements with Canada. Last year’s statewide king salmon catch was 521,612.
