The Department of Fish and Game has announced that 74,800 “treaty” king salmon (non-hatchery fish) will be available for taking in the summer commercial troll season’s first opening, which started Saturday.
The department released summer king salmon harvest numbers on June 22.
In total, 106,800 kings remain on the table following the spring fishery harvest, the agency said, and the troll fleet will be able to target 70% of those in the summer’s first opener. The fleet hooked 24,700 fish in the winter opener and an additional 14,100 kings in the spring, the department estimates.
This year’s total commercial king harvest number is down 44,000 from last year due to weaker expected returns.
The treaty harvest is regulated by the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Commission, with the Alaska Board of Fisheries setting a management plan to split Alaska's catch between different gear types and user groups. Alaska hatchery kings are not subject to the treaty.
The summer fishery could be worth millions to trollers, said Fish and Game management biologist Grant Hagerman in Sitka, estimating the fish will be worth $6 per pound.
“We could be looking at $6 million to the trollers, so this is a huge win for us,” Hagerman said of a federal appeals court order on June 21 allowing the fishery to open on schedule while a lawsuit proceeds that could close the fishery.
A Washington state-based conservation group sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2020, arguing that the salmon are needed to feed endangered orcas off the coast of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. The Wild Fish Conservancy won the case at the U.S. District Court level, but the state and Alaska Trollers Association appealed and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of the judge’s ruling on June 22 while the litigation proceeds.
The initial summer opener should last nine or 10 days, depending on weather conditions, according to Fish and Game’s June 22 announcement.
Trollers were able to target 106,900 kings in the initial 2022 opener, about 32,000 more than thus summer, Hagerman noted, but reduced abundance this year has lowered the harvest figure.
Catch limits are down for 2023 after the Pacific Salmon Commission announced in February that it will use a new, more conservative method to set harvest caps for Southeast Alaska.
Fish and Game announced in March that trollers, purse seiners, drift gillnetters, set gillnetters and sport fishermen can catch a combined total of 201,910 treaty kings this year.
The Ketchikan Daily News contributed to this report.
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