The Haines Portage Cove Harbor. (Emily Files)
Lynn Canal has been packed with fishermen recently. But, though still higher than other areas in the region, chum salmon harvests are coming in lower than last year. And, concern is developing over a slow sockeye return.
In the third week for commercial gillnetting in District 15, the chum harvest was lower than expected.
Wyatt Rhea-Fournier is a management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Haines.
“We thought maybe this would be the big pulse of chum salmon coming through,” says Rhea-Fournier. “And we did catch about 125,000. Which is a little bit below our 10-year average and definitely lower than last year when we were catching a lot of chum. And a lot of that has to do with limited time.”
To conserve king salmon returning to the Chilkat River, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is implementing night closures and a maximum six inch net restriction.
“Although we think of a lot of our Chinook already being up in the river, when we look at the last 10 years, and we look at the coded-wire tag data, we see that it’s actually during the first four weeks that we have a lot of Chilkat Chinook salmon in our harvest,” says Rhea-Fournier.
Fish and Game is starting to allow more fishing in certain areas of District 15.
“So we got a little more fishing out there but we had kind of some weak tides, and we had some real hot weather,” says Rhea-Fournier. “I don’t think we got as many as everyone was hoping. Just was looking at what happened down in the seine fishery, down below us in Amalga Harbor and it was the same thing. They only caught some 80,000 fish or so. So that was also kind of slow for the seine commercial fishery.”
The last couple of weeks, the Lynn Canal fishery saw over 170 boats.
“Pretty good showing,” says Rhea-Fournier. “And that also will take a toll on our folks. They’re used to fishing with 100 boats. Now you’re fishing with almost 200 boats, it gets a little crowded down there.”
Now, Rhea-Fournier says ADF&G is starting to be concerned about sockeye salmon.
The department monitors stocks on the Chilkoot and Chilkat Rivers.
“Unfortunately we’re really low on our weirs up here,” says Rhea-Fournier. “We’re nowhere near where we want to be. We’re about half of what we usually have at this time through the Chilkoot weir. And we’re about 25 percent of what we usually have through the Chilkat weir. So that is definitely concerning. And we’ve had very low harvest of sockeye in the fishery down below us. Both in our gillnet fishery and in the recent sein opener.”
And it’s not just in Upper Lynn Canal. Sockeye stocks in other parts of the state are showing poor returns, too. Commercial fishing for sockeye in Yakutat was shut down last month due to historically low returns. Returns to the Chignik River are the lowest in 50 years.
“When you see multiple areas having poor returns of the same species, that starts to indicate a marine survival, or a marine growth type of problem,” says Rhea-Fournier.
Rhea-Fournier says he’ll be looking into management strategies to conserve sockeye in the next few weeks.
“We’re not seeing a lot of fish coming back,” says Rhea-Fournier. “It’s not like we’re seeing them down at the bottom end and I’m waiting two weeks for them to get to the weir. We may be looking at a very low run. And as some of us may remember, last year on the Chilkoot we had one of the lowest runs that we’d ever had. So we want to make sure we get as many fish back up there this year so we don’t have two years in a row of poor spawning populations. We want to get as many spawners in there as we can.
It’s still early in the season, but so far sockeye returns to the Chilkat and Chilkoot rivers are trending below the 10-year average.
Notice the last two years, record high chum returns record low King and Sockeye returns. For the scientists at Fish and Game notice the inverse correlation. Record high chum returns correlates with the record low king and sockeye returns. The more you enhance the chum the more you reduce the king and sockeye. Please respect your constitutional duty to ensure sustainable fish returns in Alaska. Which BTW you all at Fish and Game HAVE NOT BEEN DOING.