A bountiful harvest of sockeye and pink salmon far exceeding
forecasts is being delivered by commercial fishermen to processors in Bristol
Bay and Prince William Sound, and the fish just keep on coming.
Statewide, the preliminary harvest total on July 9 stood at 47,666,000
salmon, including nearly 28 million sockeyes, 16 million humpies, 3.7 million
chum, 227,000 chinook and 196,000 coho.
In the famed Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fishery, which had a
preseason harvest forecast of 16.86 million fish, harvesters had delivered in
excess of 21 million fish.
“It’s early enough in
the season so that we could see another good push of fish,” said Travis Elison,
at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s office in King Salmon.
Through July 9, harvesters for the Naknek-Kvichak had
delivered 10.3 million sockeyes to processors, including 1.1 million fish on
July 3 and 1.2 million fish on July 4. Since July 4, daily harvests had dropped
to under one million fish, and the catch could come back up or continue to
decrease, Elison said.
Other Bristol Bay preliminary harvest totals through July 9
included 5 million reds for Egegik District, 5.2 million reds for the Nushagak,
89,000 for Togiak and 497,000 for Ugashik.
Some permit holders who had started in the Egegik district
had moved on to the Naknek-Kvichak’s more abundant runs, so that the spread of
permits being fished included 629 permits for the Naknek-Kvichak, 334 permits
in the Nushagak, 309 permits for Egegik, 85 permits in the Ughsik and 61
permits for Togiak.
The seine fleet in Prince William Sound was hauling in so
many humpies that Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists were having a
hard time keeping the harvest numbers updated, said Tommy Sheridan, the state’s
area seine manager.
The pink salmon season catch through July 9 was nearing 14
million fish, compared with the preseason forecast of just under 13 million
fish, and Sheridan said that including common property and hatchery cost
recovery fish, biologists now expected the overall harvest to exceed 20 million
humpies.
While the peak has passed for the Copper River district,
drift fleet harvests had slowed but kept on coming, with 1.85 million sockeye,
42,000 chum, 10,000 kings and fewer than 1,000 pink and silver salmon
delivered.
Cook Inlet’s harvest reached 639,000 salmon, up from 244,000
fish just a week earlier, mostly sockeyes harvested in the central district of
Upper Cook Inlet.
The harvest for the Southeast region stood at 2.3 million
salmon. On the Alaska Peninsula, the catch exceeded 2.5 million salmon,
including 1.8 million reds, and at Kodiak, 1.4 million salmon, including 1.2 million reds, had
been delivered to processors.