For the second time in three years, state officials will allow Prince William Sound commercial fish processors to strip valuable eggs from millions of pink salmon and throw away the unwanted carcasses.
Normally, such a practice would violate the state's "wanton waste" law.
But the Department of Fish and Game is making an exception because of an explosive run of pinks far larger than expected.
At least 3 million unharvested pinks are milling in the waters near Valdez. Most of the fish migrated to their birthplace at the Solomon Gulch hatchery, near the trans-Alaska oil pipeline terminal.
The hatchery had forecast a return of 11.6 million pinks, but the run could turn out to be more than double that, state biologists said. The pinks are too numerous for commercial fishermen and processing plants to handle before the fish lose their color and their flesh deteriorates.
Ideally, all the pinks could be harvested for people to eat, said Doug Mecum, state commercial fisheries director. Short of that, something valuable still can be salvaged from the pinks -- their eggs, or roe, which can fetch several dollars per pound wholesale in Japan.
"It's no different from taking the peel off the banana and eating the inside," said Ed Day, a fourth-generation commercial fisherman in Valdez.
Day, who's been working hard to net pinks with his seine boat Deserie Lynne, described Valdez waters as laced with "thick, brown streaks of fish" moving along the beaches.
So many pinks have shown up at Valdez that state officials have doubled the daily bag limit for sportfishermen from six to 12 pinks per day.
"Oh, man, there's a gazillion of them," said Matt Miller, a state sportfish biologist.
The pink salmon, also known as the humpy, is the runt of Alaska salmon, the smallest of five species harvested commercially. Pinks are also the most abundant. Most are stuffed into cans, cooked in giant steam tunnels and sold across the country. Commercial fishermen are getting about 11 cents a pound for them at Valdez this season.
Why are so many pinks coming back this summer?
Biologists and hatchery workers cite unusually high ocean survival rates for the pinks, which spend a little over a year at sea after they're released as fry from the hatchery. Like all Pacific salmon, they deteriorate and die soon after they return to their natal waters to spawn.
Each spring, the Valdez hatchery releases millions of fry and usually about 4 percent of them return. This year, evidently, lots more pinks stayed alive in the hazard-filled ocean, hatchery workers said.
Fishermen already have caught about 15 million pinks. But millions more will need to be dealt with before the Valdez fishery finishes up in a week or two.
Processing plants are able to turn some bad pinks into fishmeal used as animal feed, but the plants are maxxed out, state officials said.
Under an emergency regulation, the processors may strip roe and then grind up and dispose of the carcasses provided they're unable to give the fish away to food banks or the general public.
It's unlikely anyone will want such a huge volume of pinks, Mecum said. Most Alaskans prefer king, sockeye or silver salmon.
High ocean survival rates in 2003 also produced a pink deluge, not just in Valdez but across Prince William Sound. That season, processors stripped roe from the females among about 15 million surplus pinks.
If the excess pinks aren't scooped up, they'll die and rot on Valdez beaches or wander into as many as 39 area streams and possibly foul up natural salmon runs, which also appear to be strong this year, state biologists said.
"These fish are just going to wander around with nowhere to go," Mecum said. "Obviously, millions of fish washing up on the beach creates a public nuisance."
Laura Weaver, bookkeeper at Valdez Fisheries Development Association, which runs the Solomon Gulch hatchery, said the hatchery could release fewer fry to try to prevent oversized returns. But because ocean survival rates vary, that could backfire into an exceptionally weak run.
"This hatchery here needs to be praised because they're our bread and butter," said Day, the Valdez seiner.
Even with the higher bag limits, sportfishermen are unlikely to make much of a dent in the pinks, Miller said.
But for anglers looking for a surefire fishing feast, Valdez is the place to be, whether casting from a boat or from shore, he said. Many of the pinks are reported to be still bright and lively.
"If you've got a kid and you're trying to get him interested in fishing, the action down there in Valdez right now is pretty fast and furious," Miller said.
Daily News reporter Wesley Loy can be reached at wloy@adn.com or 257-4590.
