Southeast fisheries drawing to a close for summer

One of Wrangell’s two seafood processors has drawn down production early for the season due to lower than expected returns this summer.

Updated twice daily, on Tuesday the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Blue Sheet reported just over 143 million salmon have been harvested statewide, though numbers were not available for the Bristol Bay, Kuskokwim and Aleutian Islands districts. Seventy-four percent of these are pink salmon, with over 106 million already reported in. Coming off of last year’s season – declared a “disaster” by Gov. Bill Walker in January – forecasts for this year expected 204 million salmon to be caught by Alaska’s commercial fishermen.

In Southeast, ADFG projected 55.7 million salmon for this year, with 43 million of those to be pinks. The Blue Sheet figures the region to be coming in below expectation, with around 35,175,000 salmon reported so far. Of these, 24,715,000 pink salmon make up about 68 percent of Southeast’s total harvest so far, well outpacing 2016’s total return of 18.4 million but still disappointing.

“Our original intent, our prediction, was we would have a bigger season,” explained John Webby, regional manager for Trident Seafoods in Southeast Alaska. Its Wrangell plant wound its operations to a close for the season on August 12.

For the time being, Trident has been running its salmon down to Ketchikan for canning. Elsewhere the season has been quite successful, with Webby reporting robust returns at Trident’s Sand Point and Bristol Bay plants.

“Those two areas were exceptionally good,” he commented.

Wrangell’s other major processor, Sea Level Seafoods, will remain operational through the end of October, when the Dungeness crab fall fishery closes.

“It’s been up and down,” plant manager Vern Phillips said of the season.

The underperformers for this summer’s catch have been crab, sockeye and pink salmon, he explained. Chums on the other hand have been doing really well, making up about 22 percent of Southeast’s total catch this year and somewhat offsetting the shortfall in pink salmon.

In terms of totals, it would be premature yet to compare this season to last year’s, as Phillips explained the season could still improve before its closure at the month’s end.

“There’s not a lot of time left,” he noted.

Though Sea Level will continue to operate through the 30-day fall crabbing fishery in October, Phillips does not anticipate it will turn around what has otherwise been a disappointing fishery. For Dungeness crab this year, its summer fishery was shortened by three weeks due to calculations based on its opening week’s poundage.

“We felt that a three-week reduction was commensurate with the numbers,” explained ADFG shellfish biologist Joe Stratman.

Within the dictates of its fishery management plan, ADFG decided to allow for an additional fall season opening, but only for a shortened 30-day period. Typically the fall crabbing season runs for two months in most districts, though in Southeast Alaska a five-month season is common.

For the summer season, preliminary numbers indicate 187 commercial Dungeness crab fishermen together landed 1.43 million pounds in Southeast. The largest yield came from District 8, where 75 permit-holders harvested 399,000 pounds of crab. In all, the summer season is estimated to be worth around $4.42 million. The summertime sees the bulk of the catch ordinarily, with only about 20 percent of a year’s harvest caught in the fall, with the majority harvested during the summer season.