The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has issued an emergency order. Starting Thursday, sports fishermen on the Chilkoot are prohibited from keeping any sockeye salmon they catch. Anglers may keep up to six pink and six chum salmon per day, but sockeyes are off limits.

 Tugaw: “This year we’ve seen some extremely low return numbers.”

Alex Tugaw manages the area’s sports fisheries. The number of fish swimming past the weir at the Chilkoot informs his management decisions.

Tugaw: “Right now, escapement through the weir is well below our biological escapement goal. This is really quite shocking actually”

Tugaw says 600 sockeyes have been counted so far. On average, 20.000 of the fish swim through by this time of year. This means the run is at 3% of its average size.   

Tugaw: “And essentially that just means that we really need to take some strong conservation actions in order to ensure the sockeye salmon run can meet its goal, and it is not going to meet its goal, to get as many fish into the river as possible.”

The minimum goal for a sustainable run is 38.000 fish. That’s a long way to go.

Fish and game has not issued directives to the commercial fishing fleet yet, but Nicole Zeiser, who manages that fishery, says the department is working on it.

Zeiser: “As far as what I’m going to do for next week is unknown at this time, but there will be restrictions in time and area on the eastern shoreline. The idea is to shift effort over to the western shoreline in upper Lynn Canal in order to target Chilkat river sockeye salmon stocks which are doing pretty good right now, they are tracking above average.”

The Chilkoot run is an outlier in doing so poorly. The biologists say Sockeye salmon are doing quite well throughout Southeast Alaska. Tugaw says one explanation could lie in a boom and bust effect.

Tugaw: “The parent year for this generation blew past the escapement goal with about 140.000 fish making it back into the lake. It would be my guess that the offspring of those fish, there were too many of them in the lake, and they probably outcompeted each other. It probably led to a lot of starvation and probably fairly poor smolt survival.”

Zeiser agrees this could be one explanation, but she says historically the Chilkoot has not suffered from over or under escapement. She says environmental factors could be the reason for the low numbers. She cites temperature and drought conditions. She says it could also be an effect of the storm and landslides from 2020.

Regardless of the cause, the biologists are not alarmed. Tugaw says with the right measures in place, the fish will likely return to their usual numbers.

Tugaw: “The population in Chilkoot lake is not actively collapsing. This isn’t a fishery collapse. This is likely one fairly poor return  year. But to make sure that the offspring of this generation return strong, in the future, some strong conservation measures are really needed to allow for as many fish as possible to make it back into the lake.”

Fish and game has not put restrictions on subsistence fishing as of yet. Agency representatives declined to comment on the matter.