By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
While high demand for Alaskan salmon drove fish prices to new heights this summer, returns for Sitka-area hatchery chum salmon were middling, a Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association official told the Sentinel today.
Enhanced chum salmon returns in June and July were quite poor before picking up in August, NSRAA general manager Scott Wagner said.
“All of those (summer) returns were very poor across all of our site... It was just the fall chum salmon that was the big boon to the fishermen,” he said.
The price for troll-caught chums rose as high as $1.20 per pound last month, the highest price Wagner could remember.
“That’s the highest I’ve ever seen,” he said. “It was a record.”
NSRAA Sawmill Creek Hatchery manager Rebecca Olson feeds coho in one of the rearing ponds at the hatchery in the Gary Paxton Industrial Park. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
Looking back, Wagner noted that in 2020 salmon returns across the state were historically low.
“Last year, not just for chum salmon but across all species, Alaska had one of the worst salmon returns in over 40 years, so there was no inventory in freezers...With the economy starting to recover and turn around this year... the processors were eager to get some product,” Wagner reported. All told, the enhanced chum fishery generated $5 million for the troll fleet alone, he said.
While the enhanced chum fishery was an economic success for fishermen, Wagner said, the actual salmon returns were a bit below average.
“Overall it was a success as far as our contribution to the fishery and the economic value that they received out of the fish,” he said. “As far as numbers of fish returning it was a very poor to average year in Deep Inlet; in Crawfish it was more average.”
Salmon survivability can be impacted by a host of factors, he said, including freshwater conditions during spawning, predation near the shore, and lack of food availability in the ocean. The last factor, he noted, could be triggered by abnormally warm ocean conditions that can change which types of zooplankton grow.
While salmon returns in Southeast have rebounded this year, in the Yukon River drainage salmon runs have been a full 90 percent below normal, leading to dramatic impacts on communities in that region, the Anchorage Daily News reported last week. Meanwhile, in California, Chinook runs in the Sacramento River have been catastrophically affected by warm water temperatures and low river levels, the Washington Post reported today.
Back in Sitka, the fish that did return this year were smaller than normal, Wagner said.
The returns are better this year across Southeast and across the state, but the salmon sizes are smaller,” he said.
In addition, an unusually high proportion of male fish returning to the Medvejie hatchery has led to a shortage of eggs for NSRAA’s breeding program. Wagner said one factor driving this is the strong return of three-year-old fish, 70 percent of which are male so far.
“It’s being driven mainly – I don’t know fully what’s driving it – but one of the main drivers is a very high three-year-old ratio... Generally we’ll see 20 to 30 percent of a year return, what we would say as a brood year. Those fish are born in one year and they come back at three, four and five (years old)... Not unheard of, just unusual, and whether this is another thing that’s being driven by ocean conditions or really good survival, like most things we won’t know until the full brood year returns,” he said.
While the Medvejie hatchery at Bear Cove has already exceeded its goal of 90,000 chum salmon for broodstock this year, egg numbers remain below what is needed.
“We have, through (Sunday), 64 million. We need another 27 million eggs, which means we need another 30,000 to 40,000 fish, which is very challenging this late in the season to achieve that,” Wagner said. “We think there are another 15,000 to 20,000 in Bear Cove and we’re thinking about closing Deep Inlet and Crawfish.”
In order to help NSRAA meet its broodstock needs, the Department of Fish and Game announced today that Bear Cove will close to troll and sport fishing. The troll closure will take effect at the end of the day today, whereas sport fishing in Bear Cove will close starting on September 15.
“This closure is being implemented at the request of NSRAA in order to meet coho salmon broodstock goals at the Medvejie Creek Hatchery. If broodstock needs are met, the specified waters of Bear Cove may reopen to trolling,” ADFG wrote in a press release.
In making the decision to close Bear Cove to sport fishing, ADFG noted that the Medvejie hatchery has collected no coho salmon for broodstock this year.
“Coho salmon returning to Medvejie Hatchery is not expected to meet broodstock goals in 2021. To date, no coho salmon have been collected for broodstock while 3,000 are needed. This closure is necessary to provide sufficient numbers of coho salmon to meet broodstock needs,” the press release reads.
As for NSRAA’s other fish species, Wagner said that the enhanced chinook return was decent.
“Chinooks actually came in slightly above forecast and a slightly larger size, hopefully the beginning of reversing a long term trend,” he said. For coho salmon, he added that while the price was quite high at $3 per pound, the catch was low and the return was average.
