Interesting Article on Alaskan Salmon Fishing

[Rickeoni]

https://www.adn.com/business-econom...eye-harvest-blowing-away-forecast-once-again/

 

[wildmanyeah]

Climate change has warmed up the bearing sea and its became an amazing nursery for sockeye.

 

[mbowers]

"Fishermen in the Nushagak district, at least, have become more efficient in selecting their gear in recent years, which may be helping to boost the catch, he said.

The last two years we’ve had these really tremendous runs of two-ocean fish here in the Nushagak,” he said. “People probably saw fish going through their gear. I think there’s definitely been some learning going on.”"

They're just using smaller gill nets to catch more of the small fish. Lots of small fish is not an indicator of high productivity. In fact lots of small fish indicates a shortage of food. Alaska dumps a billion hatchery pink salmon into the ocean which makes for smaller wild salmon due to food competition.

The hot weather was brutal this year. I spent 3 weeks on the river and did not catch a single chinook, not even a jack. The river was 21C..

 

[UkeeDreamin]

Higher harvest with a lower return and an abundance of underage fish being targeted, not exactly a recipe for success!

Good luck with that management approach Alaska!

Cheers!

Ukee

 

[ziggy]

Are these returns all the product of salmon ranching? If so how is this abundance impacting the food chain for wild fish? What implications does it have on other areas?

 

[mbowers]

Are these returns all the product of salmon ranching? If so how is this abundance impacting the food chain for wild fish? What implications does it have on other areas?

Most of the sockeye are wild. But for Alaska's total harvest "They estimate that 48% of the commercial salmon catch in Alaska is hatchery fish."

Nobody knows for sure what it's doing but chinook age and size at age are both down: suggests the chinook can't find enough food.

 

[seadna]

Are these returns all the product of salmon ranching? If so how is this abundance impacting the food chain for wild fish? What implications does it have on other areas?

Alaska releases around 50M sockeye smolts every year. Only a portion of the sockeye released are marked (otolith marked) but it is estimated that hatchery sockeye account for a 5% of the overall sockeye harvest. For comparison, about 65% of the chum harvest, 42% of the pink harvest, 23% of the coho harvest and 18% of the chinook harvest in AK are hatchery origin. Since pinks and chum make up the VAST majority of salmon planted by AK hatcheries (850million pinks and 650million chum), it's those fish that have the biggest impact on the other species. That's the point I was trying to make in this post - https://www.sportfishingbc.com/forum/index.php?threads/low-holing-by-alaskas-salmon-ranchers.75446/. The modeling in the paper I referenced in that post shows that the entirety of the decrease in Frazier river sockeye can be accounted for by a model that takes the impact of Alaska pink hatchery salmon into account. Since pinks compete with sockeye for similar food sources pinks directly affect the amount of sockeye that share the feeding grounds. Pink salmon are particularly interesting to model since in addition to the steady increase in numbers due to the AK hatcheries, there's the natural every other year cycle that provides a oscillating signal to model - e.g. if pinks cause a decrease in sockeye, the decrease should be larger in alternate years and the magnitude of this alternate year difference should be roughly concordant with the magnitude of the decrease caused by the annual increase in AK hatcheries. That's just what the paper I referenced in the link above showed.

The impact of the huge amount of chum planted on other species hasn't (to my knowledge) been modeled but one might anticipate that they would impact other species (in particular chinook). So in my opinion, the decreases we are seeing in salmon returns in BC, WA and OR can likely be largely explained by the huge increase in hatchery salmon production in AK. As you can see from the graph below (source = http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/FedAidPDFs/RIR.5J.2019.01.pdf), overall salmon harvest in AK has increased over 50 or so years and much of that is attributable to the hatchery program. So we to the south, are getting hosed so AK can produce more of the less desirable chums and pinks.

 

[Birdsnest]

Nice to see this forum catching on. Notice barely a teardrop of US NGO funding going against US salmon ranching is Alaska. It all goes against alberta oil and bc salmon farming and now BC sport fishing for salmon. All the while the USA profits heavily from such activism against canadian industry.
Its time for Canada to drop the gloves on US funded activism in Canada however we seem to be stuck waiting for our liberal PM's balls to drop but that clearly is never going to happen.

 

[Whitebuck]

So...if all salmon stocks came back to historic levels then we would have a feed shortage?

 

[seadna]

So...if all salmon stocks came back to historic levels then we would have a feed shortage?

That seems likely. Note the the Alaska salmon harvest has been increasing over the last 50 years while it has been decreasing nearly everywhere else. It would appear the net effect of Alaska hatcheries is to shift the harvest north.

Alaska is not alone in dumping tons of salmon into the ocean, Japan, Russia and Korea also contribute. I think WA has done OK as we produce a fair amount of chinoook in our hatcheries (much of which has been a mainstay of the WCVCI fishery). So, either AK needs to reduce it's hatchery output or BC has to increase it's in order to compete. Given the impact of hatcheries on wild fish (and the predilection of some groups to preserve wild fish), ramping up hatcheries is a hard sell. But when the wilds from here (CA, WA, OR, BC) are competing with huge numbers of hatchery fish for the same food sources in the northern pacific ocean, it seems unlikely that the wild fish will recover.