Last year's Southeast salmon harvest was 69% of 10-year average

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced this month that commercial salmon fishermen across all gear groups caught a total 31.7 million salmon in Southeast Alaska during 2022.

Last year's all-species harvest was low, Fish and Game reported. The 2022 catch amounts to 69% of the average harvest over the past 10 years of 46.1 million salmon.

The Southeast salmon harvest has been erratic in the past few years. The 2022 catch of 31.7 million was about half of the 2021 catch of 58.9 million and about double the 2020 catch of 14.6 million salmon.

Fish and Game attributes some of the change in overall salmon harvest to the fluctuating pink salmon catch. The 18.3 million pink salmon caught in 2022 accounted for 58% of the overall Southeast salmon catch last year, according to Fish and Game.

With its 2022 catch report, Fish and Game released predictions for the 2023 pink harvest in Southeast. The department predicts fishermen will harvest 19 million pinks this year, about a 4% increase from last year.

According to Fish and Game, 19 million would still make for a “weak” harvest or about half the average harvest over the past 10 years of 33 million pinks.

Pink salmon are known to spawn after exactly two years. The pink harvest is typically higher in Southeast during odd years as stronger populations return to their spawning grounds.

A forecast of 19 million pink salmon for 2023 would be a significant drop from the previous odd-year harvest in 2021 of 48.5 million fish and is only 39% of the average harvest over the past 10 odd-numbered years , according to the department's April report.

Fish and Game said that it builds its pink salmon harvest estimates for Southeast Alaska from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration trawl surveys that count juvenile pink salmon in Chatham and Icy straits in June and July. NOAA's Southeast Alaska Coastal Monitoring surveys also track water temperatures and the “effects of climate and nearshore ocean conditions on year-class strength of salmon and ecologically related species,” according to Fish and Game.

Statewide, the department predicts a 2023 commercial salmon harvest of 189 million salmon across Alaska waters, including 122 million pinks, 48 million sockeye, 16 million chum salmon and 3 million coho.

The all-species salmon harvest across Alaska in 2022 was approximately 163.2 million fish, Fish and Game reported this month.

Statewide, the 2022 harvest included 69.5 million pink, 75.5 million sockeye, 16 million chum, 1.9 million coho and 319,000 chinook, Fish and Game reported. Southeast fishermen harvested 18.3 million pink, 10.5 million chum, 1.5 million coho, 1.2 million sockeye and 265,601 chinook salmon in 2022.

According to Fish and Game, purse seine fishermen in all areas of Southeast caught a total of 19 million salmon last year: 14.7 million pinks, 3.5 million chum, 629,000 sockeye, 162,000 coho and 27,000 chinook.

Southeast Alaska trollers caught 2.2 million salmon across all fishery areas and openings last year. Hand troll fishermen caught 32,000 salmon, while power troll fishermen caught 2.1 million salmon. Altogether, trollers caught 1.05 million chum, 854,000 coho, 197,000 chinook, 79,000 pinks and 2,000 sockeye.

The total Southeast drift gillnet salmon catch for 2022 topped 3.6 million, according to Fish and Game. Drift gillnetters took 2.39 million chum, 633,000 pinks and 480,000 sockeye.