It’s been a fairly good start to the summer for king salmon fishermen. The first opening of that troll season started on July 1, abruptly ending by emergency order just before midnight on July 4. The order was based on preliminary catch rate and effort data.
“It looks like we did take the target harvest,” reported Grant Hagerman, ADFG’s region troll management biologist in Sitka. That target is 63,000 non-Alaska hatchery fish, as laid out by the Pacific Salmon Treaty signed with Canada.
A total of approximately 26,000 Chinook and 550 landings have so far been accounted for, though harvest information is still coming in. Hagerman explained that while many catches are now reported electronically, some tickets are still in the mail, and there is a lag to consider.
“It’s usually several weeks before we have final numbers on that,” he said. Aerial surveys indicated the participating fleet should look similar to last year’s, which saw around 740 permits.
The harvest has been better than preseason forecasts first anticipated. A slow winter fishery and additional restrictions in place for May and June led management biologists to expect between 8,000 and 10,000 fish per day.
“What we saw in-season was a little bit different,” said Hagerman. Actual catch looked to be more akin to 15,000 to 17,000 fish per day, prompting the emergency closure on Independence Day. The majority of these were caught off the outer coastline, further offshore than normal.
Depending on how the run shapes up a second opening may follow in mid-August, with the date depending on whether there is a need for conservation closing.
“If it’s low enough or we’re a little bit concerned,” Hagerman explained, the department can order a conservation closure for up to 10 days. “At this point, it’s still a question mark.”
For districts 6 and 8, the drift gillnet season opened on July 2 for a three-day period. Participation was reportedly below-average, and while harvest rates of sockeye improved they remained lower than usual. A 24-hour extension was announced, and in Wrangell’s district another 24-hour mid-week opening was granted.
Harvest rates for king and coho salmon in both areas likewise remained below average, though these were offset by higher than usual harvest rates for pinks and chum. A four-day opening for both districts was to begin on July 9, wrapping up today.
ADFG reports that the Wrangell and Prince of Wales districts’ gillnet fishery is managed for sockeye salmon abundance through early August. This year’s preseason forecast for Stikine River sockeye salmon is 185,000 fish, above the recent 10-year average of 168,000.
Meanwhile, in the Anita Bay terminal harvest area, as of Friday about 4,800 Chinook and 7,600 chum salmon had been taken. The year’s forecast expects a total of 481,000 summer chum, 15,400 Chinook, and 20,100 coho salmon. A rotational fishery began on June 13 for the drift gillnet and purse seine gear groups with an initial time ratio of one to one, changing to a time ratio of two to one in SW 31. This rotational fishing period will conclude on August 31 when Anita Bay opens to both gear groups concurrently until it closes for the season at noon on November 10.
Meanwhile, the Dungeness crab summer fishery is looking at an early closure this year, set for July 25. The season has been shortened by three weeks, considerably more than the last to be shortened, by one week in 2013.
ADFG fisheries biologist Adam Messmer explained the first week of the catch is used to project the rest of the year, a method in use since 2000. The upper threshold for the season is 2,250,000 pounds of crab, with projections falling well short of that so far.
Usually the Stikine Flats are the most productive in the region, but it and other parts of the mainland shoreline have not fared so well. Better catches elsewhere in northern and southern Southeast have in the past compensated for such shortfalls, but that was not the case this season.
“It was pretty similar across the board,” Messmer said.
In the case of 2013’s early summer closure, the crab still came, but later on during the fall season. Ordinarily only 20 percent of the year’s harvest are caught in those months, with the majority harvested during the summer season. But in that case the autumn catch represented around 39 percent of the year’s takings.
“Those crab were around for harvest in the fall,” said Messmer. “When that happened there was quite a bit of softshell” evident during the summer.
He said it was possible the year’s molt came later than usual, something that could be verified by dockside sampling. If the rate of softshell crab is higher than usual, management could opt for a full Dungeness fishery in the fall, for two months rather than one.
“We don’t really know that until this season continues,” Messmer added.
Other variables could be at play, such as predation by sea otters, but they would be harder to pinpoint because of Dungeness’ data-limited fishery. The department would prefer to “err on the side of conservation,” he explained. However
long it lasts, the autumn fishery is expected to begin on October 1.
Seafood production has been ongoing for a couple of weeks already in Wrangell. For salmon, numbers at Trident Seafoods is about going as hoped for so far. But regional manager John Webby explained the season is still in its early stages.
“I think we’re really close,” he said. “Our chum numbers could be a little greater,” though harvests to the north have been “very robust.” “We’re sending most of those fish here to Wrangell,” he said.
“Pink numbers are down a little bit. But it’s been so early and there haven’t been a lot of pink fisheries,” Webby added.
Above the nets and the brine, one potential point of concern for local seafood producers is the availability of water. In Wrangell, treatment of its freshwater sources failed to keep up with production last summer, leading to emergency measures to be taken late in July and causing some disruption to seafood plants. Additional staff and new means of maintaining the filtration bays have been adopted by the city’s water department for this summer, and so far has shown to have made the process more efficient.
Still, this week the city announced it was moving to a cautionary alert level for Wrangell water users.
“It’s cautionary in the sense that the tanks can fluctuate rapidly,” explained interim city manager Carol Rushmore.
Keeping the sand filtration bays clear and water flowing involves clearing them of sediment, which in its old age the system is more prone to accumulate. The new methods have brought the amount of time needed between cleanings up from four days last year to three weeks last month, though heavier demand has brought that back down to two weeks, Rushmore said.
With the processors
getting into full swing, she asked that residents try to remain mindful of their water usage. At this stage, it involves
making sure taps and spigots are turned off when not in use and checking for line leakage. Water sales to cruise ships has been curtailed for the present, and restaurants are encouraged
to provide tap water to customers upon request. This last bit will not in itself solve the water issue, but is one more way to remind people to think conservatively.
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