Feds, States Pouring Millions of Dollars into Boosting Declining Pacific Salmon, Steelhead Runs
For Alaska’s Bristol Bay salmon commercial fishery, 2021 was another robust season, with deliveries of an estimated 40.5 million of the Bay’s famed wild sockeyes.
Statewide through late September, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s preliminary harvest data showed 226.3 million salmon delivered to processors, including 156.5 million pinks, nearly 55 million sockeyes, 12 million chums, 2.4 million cohos and 247,000 Chinooks.
Still, there were signs of concern even in Bristol Bay which, with its nine major river systems, comprises the largest commercial sockeye salmon-producing region in the world.
“In Bristol Bay, average size is at 4.5 pounds per sockeye this year, down from 5.1 pounds in 2020,” fisheries consultant Dan Lesh noted in a late July report for McKinley Research Gr...