Alaska News

Clues to Alaska's king salmon crash begin to emerge

One of the casualties of this year's state budget cuts was money for a program aimed at discovering why Alaska's king salmon stocks have declined since 2007.

A five-year, $30 million Chinook Salmon Research Initiative launched in 2013 included more than 100 researchers focused on three dozen projects across 12 major river systems from Southeast to the Yukon. Now the ambitious effort has been cut to about a dozen projects.

"We had to step back and narrow the focus and make sure key projects still had money to continue for at least the next two years," said Ed Jones, a coordinator with the state Sport Fish Division who oversees the research team.

The project has received $15 million so far, with about $6 million remaining.

"We're hopeful that another appropriation will come down the pike," Jones said. "These are long-term endeavors, and we've just now scratched the surface of the research."

Chinook harvest sampling programs in Prince William Sound, Kodiak and Cook Inlet and Southeast "are very important," Jones said. They identify stocks of chinook salmon over time. You know the old assumption that you catch a chinook right off the mouth of a river and it's going to that river? We're starting to realize that's not necessarily the case."

Also saved is a new juvenile chinook tagging project in the Copper River.

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"For two years we've tagged smolt and clipped off an adipose fin as they are starting to leave the river," he explained. "So when those fish start to return as adults to Prince William Sound, we will be able to tell what stocks in that catch are actually going into the Copper River and what stocks are going elsewhere. And in theory, we'll be able to tell what the marine survival is of the chinook salmon over time. That's pretty neat," Jones said.

Initiative dollars also have helped fund a four-year, juvenile salmon tracking program to identify chinook cycles and production on the Yukon.

New programs tracking adult salmon in the Kuskokwim and Bristol Bay's Nushagak rivers are called "the most important ones we have going," by the initiative team. One revelation: There are a lot more king salmon in the Nushagak than anyone ever thought.

"The (Nushagak) sonar project is designed to count sockeye salmon and it does a really good job of that. But chinook salmon are kind of finicky and once the sockeye get in the river, they shy away and run more in the middle of the river and avoid our sonar array. We're starting to realize there's more fish getting by than we originally thought" – and as recently as 2013, the sonar counted more than 113,000 kings, or nearly seven times as many kings as returned to the Kenai river that same year.

"I've always thought the Nushagak was probably one of the largest producers of wild chinook salmon in the world," Jones added, "And certainly with the Kuskokwim and the Yukon, those three systems in any given year could be the world's largest producer."

"During the downturn in chinook production, folks were asking why these fish were not coming back. In Southeast, our projects identified the problem was not the fresh water environment," Jones said. "The fish were dying in the marine environment at a higher rate than ever before. We couldn't say that up north because we didn't have the projects in the water."

Chinook salmon spend five years at sea before returning to their home streams to spawn, and the runs consist of multiple age classes, with 5-year-olds dominant. This year, the runs showed some hopeful signs.

"Long story short – what we've seen in recent years is back to back poor brood year production over multiple years," Jones explained. "But this year we finally saw a bright spot with that 2010 brood year, and next year we have very good confidence in average to above average production of 6-year-olds. That's a good sign, but what we really need to see is back to back good brood years. Then I'll start saying we're climbing out of the hole and starting to cycle in the other direction."

215 fish board proposals

The state Board of Fisheries will take up 215 proposals during its 2015-16 meeting cycle, which begins in late October. The focus this cycle is on the Alaska Peninsula, Bristol Bay and the Arctic., Yukon and Kuskokwim regions. There are 70 management proposals on the agenda for Bristol Bay, 24 for commercial fisheries. http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=fisheriesboard.main

American seafood consumption lags

Most Americans are not eating enough seafood, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The study was based on an evaluation of food-intake data collected from a representative sampling of the U.S. population in a survey called "What We Eat in America."

Groups with low (or no) seafood consumption were women, people ages 19 to 30 and people of lower income and education levels.

"Mixed messages about the true benefits of eating more seafood seem to have deterred U.S. consumers from including more of it in their diets," the National Fisheries Institute said in response to the report. U.S. seafood consumption is estimated at 15 pounds per capita.

Laine Welch is a Kodiak-based commercial fishing columnist. Contact her at msfish@alaskan.com.

Laine Welch

Laine Welch is an independent Kodiak-based fisheries journalist. Contact her at msfish@alaska.com.

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