Pink salmon forecast anticipates middling run

Next year's pink salmon

harvest forecast for Southeast Alaska is anticipating a run

statistically on the stronger side, though the numbers may not be particularly optimistic for fishermen still reeling from a disappointing 2016 run.

The 2017 report predicts the coming run will fall within in the "strong" range, with a point estimate of 43 million fish and an 80-percent confidence interval.

To produce the

forecast, researchers adjusted past harvest trends using peak June-July juvenile pink

salmon abundance data from 2016. Using exponential smoothing, all harvests since 1960 were factored into the forecast estimate with greater weight put on the most recent observations.

The state forecast was adjusted using catch-per-distance-trawled statistics collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Auke Bay Laboratories in Juneau. The site conducts systematic surveys each year in the upper Chatham and Icy straits, in conjunction with NOAA's Southeast Coastal Monitoring Project.

Auke Bay Laboratories

has been using juvenile pink salmon catch and

associated biophysical data for the pink salmon forecast since 2004, and ADFG

has been adjusting its forecasts using the data since 2007. The Auke Bay 2016 peak June-July juvenile pink count was the sixth highest of the past two decades.

The report notes the

largest potential source of uncertainty for the

upcoming return will be anomalously warm sea surface

temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska, which have persisted since the fall of 2013.

Pink salmon headed to sea in 2014 and 2015 have returned in numbers well below expectation, and the report concedes the same may be the case for those which left in 2016, due back this summer.

The full report is

available online at http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/fishing/PDFs/commercial/southeast/2017_se_pink_salmon_harvest_forecast.pdf.