State forecasts lower pink harvest next year, though better than 2020

The 2022 pink salmon harvest in Southeast is forecast at about half the 10-year average but better than 2020, the brood year for next summer’s returns.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game and federal fisheries officials have forecast next year’s pink harvest at 16 million fish in Southeast.

The 10-year average is 34 million pink salmon, with 2020 a very weak year at 8 million pinks harvested — the sixth-worst year since 1962.

This year’s returns were excellent, at 48 million pinks, surpassing pre-season forecasts.

Trawl surveys collected by the Southeast Alaska Coastal Monitoring project in northern Southeast inside waters provided the best information to forecast future harvests, said Andy Piston, Southeast Alaska pink and chum salmon project leader.

The harvest forecast was primarily based on those juvenile pink salmon abundance surveys conducted in June and July in upper Chatham and Icy straits, the Nov. 16 state announcement said.

“It indicates that relatively few juvenile salmon survived all the freshwater and early marine portion of their lifecycle and are making it to Icy Strait and heading out to the ocean,” Piston said.

Though the surveys provide key information for the annual forecast, researchers cannot account for survival rates in the open ocean.

Ocean surface temperatures were irregularly warm from 2013 to 2019, with the exception of 2017, possibly affecting salmon harvests. But in the past two years, Piston said, temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska have returned to normal, which may have improved this year's salmon run.

“Those fish went out to sea in the Gulf of Alaska that temperature-wise was pretty close to normal and they seem to have survived extremely well, so hopefully, that will be a positive development for the fish that just went to sea this past summer,” Piston said.

This year’s pink harvest of 48 million fish far exceeded the pre-season forecast of 28 million. Several factors, such as improved ocean survival rates, could have helped boost returns, Piston said.

“Hopefully there are enough eggs in the gravel there that if marine survival does indeed turn out to be better than what we’ve seen recently, hopefully, there’s the potential to hopefully meet or maybe exceed our forecast (for 2022),” Piston said.