OPINION: Southeast chinook salmon take isn’t harming Yukon-Kuskokwim returns

In their Anchorage Daily News opinion piece on Yukon-Kuskokwim salmon returns on Dec. 12, 2022, the three commentary authors pointed toward the Southeast Alaska purse seine fishery as having a “bycatch” of chinook salmon. In the Southeast Alaska purse seine fishery, the harvest of chinook salmon has been a historical portion of the fishery since its inception more than 125 years ago and in no way should be considered a bycatch. Although the Southeast Alaska purse seine fishery is largely driven by pink salmon, the harvest of all five salmon species, chinook included, constitute the fishery.

From 2012 through 2021, the harvest of chinook in the common property purse seine fishery fisheries, which excludes directed hatchery terminal fisheries, has averaged 9,500 chinook per year. This number, you may notice, is much smaller than that which was quoted in the aforementioned op-ed, which was an unfortunate typo on the part of the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game’s website and has since been corrected.

King salmon management in Southeast Alaska is complex and tightly regulated. It involves regulatory processes in both international and domestic venues, and has sharing arrangements and allocations between many user groups. At the international level, an all-gear harvest ceiling for Southeast Alaska king salmon fisheries is established annually, under provisions of the U.S./Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty. The Southeast Alaska king salmon annual all-gear harvest ceiling is then allocated between user groups according to regulation (5 AAC 29.060).

In August 2018, the Pacific Salmon Commission reached agreement to renew various fishery arrangements under the treaty for the years 2019 to 2028. Under current regulation, the annual all-gear harvest ceiling is allocated to each fishery as follows:

1. Purse seine fishery: 4.3% percent of the annual all-gear harvest ceiling;

2. Drift gillnet fishery: 2.9% of the annual all-gear harvest ceiling;

3. Set gillnet fishery: 1,000 king salmon;

4. Troll fishery: 80%, after the net fishery allocations are subtracted from the annual all-gear harvest ceiling;

5. Sport fishery: 20%, after the net fishery allocations are subtracted from the all-gear annual harvest ceiling.

The Alaska Board of Fisheries also puts this allocation of Southeast Alaska chinook harvest into regulation during its board meetings.

The Southeast Alaska purse seine permit holders want to emphasize that their chinook harvest is not a “bycatch,” but a highly regulated portion of their legal, allocated harvest and is no way related to the Western chinook returns over 1,000 miles away.

Phil Doherty is executive director of the Southeast Alaska Seiners Association.

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