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Return Update-July 8th - NSRAA chum returns last week (stat week 27) seemed to flatline. There was minimal cost recovery completed in Deep Inlet and a moderate amount in SE Cove. The Hidden Falls chum weekly return last week took a slight dip to 50,000 from the previous stat week 26 return of 62,000. So far this week there […]
Return Update-June 25th - NSRAA chinook returns have been picking up the past several weeks with a total estimated harvest in Stat Week 25 of 1,341 adults. The spring chinook fisheries in the Sitka area have harvested over 2,000 Medvejie chinook making up 47% of the Sitka Sound area commercial troll harvest. Currently the return is looking like it […]
Gulf of Alaska Chinook Salmon do not warrant listing under Endangered Species Act - NOAA has concluded its 12-month scientific review to not list Chinook salmon in the Gulf of Alaska as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Action (ESA). PRESS RELEASE NMFS ESA Ruling
NSRAA Salmon Bake & Hatchery Tour - NSRAA will be offering hatchery tours and a BBQ lunch at Medvejie Hatchery on Saturday, June 27th. Lunch will consist of barbecued King Salmon, baked potato, green salad, rolls, watermelon and non-alcoholic drinks. Tickets are $15.00 per person- CASH ONLY and can be purchased during office hours at NSRAA- 1308 Sawmill Creek Road. (8-5 Mon-Fri) […]
Support Alaska Hatcheries at Board of Fisheries - Alaska Board of Fisheries Proposals. Your voice is needed. The board of fisheries will take up three hatchery proposals at the statewide meeting. Proposals 170, 171, and 172 seek to impose broad, preemptive reductions or moratoria on Alaska’s private nonprofit (PNP) salmon hatchery program without demonstrating a causal link between hatchery production and the specific […]Monday 8/16 Update
The Deep Inlet fall chum catch continued to be strong over the weekend with another good catch on Sunday by the seine fleet and the combined gillnet, seine, and troll catch for stat wk 33 is looking to be over 200k fish. The most recent seine samples from Fri and Sun show a drop in male ratio to ~50% male and an increase in the 3-year old percentage from the mid 30% range prior week to 65% 3-year olds, with age fours making up the remaining 35%. While the recent strong catches are good to see the rapid drop in 4-year olds is concerning and likely means the run will have a sharp drop off once the run has peaked, which based upon sex ratio, is likely this week. Let’s hope I am wrong but the age ratio is tracking very closely to last year and the run quickly petered out past the peak.
Troll catch and effort continues to be high in both the Sitka Sound/Eastern Channel area as well as West Crawfish. Today I would estimate over 50 trollers working the Deep Inlet area with an additional 18 in West Crawfish. Based upon the numbers of fish observed going over the rails today, daily averages continue to be high. In West Crawfish chum continue to move through the area with good show of fish from north of Cedar pass through to the Crawfish Inlet side of the pass. Cost recovery fishing in Crawfish Inlet today was very impressive with todays catch approaching 1 million pounds alone (last fished Friday for ~230k pounds). We will continue cost recovery fishing in Crawfish Inlet on Tuesday and likely every day at the head with the current strong recruitment.
The strong Deep Inlet chum catch, continued presence of large volumes in Sitka Sound/Eastern Channel and Silver Bay, greatly reduce our brood stock concerns for Medvejie. Current estimate in Bear Cove is 10k chum out of the 90k needed. There are widely distributed small schools in Silver Bay from Entry Point all the way to Bear Cove. With current water clarity it is hard to put a number on those fish making their way back to Medvejie but it appears to be substantial. We will continue to monitor recruitment to Bear Cove and provide regular updates on brood stock. Closure at Deep Inlet is not likely for next week and we are also evaluating options/logistics to secure brood at Crawfish Inlet in case of a shortage at Medvejie.
Deep Inlet update Fri 8/13
The fall chum catch in Deep Inlet has remained strong since the uptick in gillnet catch Monday morning through the Friday seine rotation. Initial indications are the gillnet catch will surpass 35k fish for M-W and the Th-F seine catch will almost certainly top 100k fish. There have been reports that Friday afternoon the seine catch had slowed but still is an impressive build from the extremely bleak stat week 32. The Tuesday 8/11 gillnet catch was 67% male with a 60% 4-year old component and 39% 3-year olds. We will be sampling the Th-F and Sun seine catch to see if the sex ration and age structure holds and will post that information Monday afternoon. Based upon this recent surge in catch and volume concerns for a brood stock closure have been greatly reduced. While I cannot eliminate the need for a brood stock closure, any potential closure it is anticipated would not happen until after the M-W gillnet opening of stat week 34 (8/25).
WK 32 Return Update
Returns through week 32 for fall chum salmon continued to be weak to Deep Inlet despite significant troll interception in the Sitka Sound troll fishery totaling 57k fish in week 32. With the change in weather over the past weekend some of the volume in Sitka Sound has begun to make it into Deep Inlet and the gillnet fleet. The gillnet fishery is still ongoing today but there has been a significant increase in the catch from last week starting Monday and continuing through today (Wednesday) and by far will be the largest weekly gillnet catch of the season. Additionally another 23k troll caught chum have been harvested so far in stat WK 33. This is very encouraging news as it was beginning to look like the fall run was going to be a bust.
While the chum trolling at West Crawfish and Crawfish Inlet has not been as impressive as Sitka Sound trollers did manage to harvest a total of 3,500 in week 32 and 2,300 so far in week 33. On Wednesday there were 15 trollers working West Crawfish and the Cedar pass area with several more on the way. There are also signs chum are beginning to move into the Crawfish Inlet SHA from both Cedar Pass and Walker Channel. Our chum cost recovery effort at the head of Crawfish Inlet on Sunday the 8th was poor with only a 20k lb catch. Today there appeared to be approximately 10-12k chum at the head of the inlet with small scattered schools near the head and around the net pen storage site. Scattered jumps also at the outer SHA line. I anticipate that we will see a large push of fish into the inlet over the next several days and the large rain event forecast for tomorrow and Friday. We will have two boats for cost recovery on Friday (8/13) working in the Crawfish Inlet SHA.
On Monday this week we completed our summer chum egg takes and have reached our egg take goals for all summer chum run projects. Monday Hidden Falls took an additional 2.5 million summer chum eggs for Gunnuk Creek Hatchery and had approximately 6k chum surplus. With summer chum egg takes complete Hidden Falls will begin to recruit chinook with egg takes likely to occur next week. Medvejie will also begin chinook egg takes next week and looks to have plenty of brood stock on hand.
We will continue to monitor fall chum returns and will have an update on any potential Deep Inlet closure on Monday 8/11. Let’s hope the chum continue to move in and this is the front portion of the fall chum run.
WK 31 Return Update
Returns in stat week 31 continued to be poor and below forecast for fall chum salmon at Deep Inlet. Historically stat week 31 is when the fall chum run catch begins to increase at Deep Inlet. This past week in stat wk 31 the catch actually dropped from week 30. Beginning on Saturday, July 31, strong troll catches of chum started to develop in Sitka Sound and continued into the first few days of the current stat week 32. There was considerable troll effort in the sound Monday through today but indications are per boat catch has dropped with the increased effort and change from calm sunny weather to overcast and rain. I was anticipating a pick up in the Deep Inlet catch this week in the net fisheries based upon the observations in the sound but that has yet to materialize. Concerns on run strength will increase substantially if we do not begin to see indications of a steady increase in run strength. Sitka Sound chum troll catch was sampled on Sunday Aug, 1 with 47% Deep Inlet origin, 30% Bear Cove/Medvejie Hatchery release and 15% Crawfish Inlet release. Age breakdown overall was ~12% 3-year olds, ~12% 5-year olds with 75% 4-year olds, 72% male and 7.8lb average. These numbers give me better confidence in where we are at in the run but the lack of volume is concerning.
West Crawfish started to show some potential last week for trollers then the bite tapered off and most of the trollers in West Crawfish moved up to Sitka sound over the weekend. There are still some in West Crawfish but the numbers have not built back up to where they were last week. Continue to have reports of fish in the outer portions of West Crawfish but no volume has moved into the Cedar Pass area or into Crawfish Inlet proper. We began cost recovery this morning in Crawfish Inlet at the head and have only harvested an estimated 76k lbs of chum.
We have nearly completed our summer run chum eggtake at all of our facilities. Chum eggtakes at Hidden Falls and Medvejie are complete with Hidden Falls making up a shortfall of 12 million of the 30 million goal at Medvejie. There are few summer chum left at Medvejie and we are beginning to see a few of the early fall chum beginning to mix in with the remaining summers. At Gunnuk we are currently 75% complete of our 20 million goal and with recent rain sufficient brood appear to making their way into the hatchery. If we fall short at Gunnuk Creek we are prepared to take additional at Hidden Falls if necessary. While it is great to make our brood stock goals there was insufficient returns to Hidden Falls to allow a commercial seine opening this year.
NSRAA project coho return troll catches have slowly ramped up beginning in stat week 29 and a weekly contribution of ~2,500 in stat week 31, with Deer Lake leading our projects in total catch with ~3,000 to date and ~7,000 overall for NSRAA. Once again the SSRAA Klawock Hatchery coho program is showing a great return this season with over 25,000 contributed to the troll fisheries so far. With such high coho prices this year I am hopeful that we will see a decent contribution from NSRAA to the troll fleet in the upcoming few weeks.
WK 30 Return Update
Summer chum egg takes are well underway at Hidden Falls, Gunnuk Creek and Medvejie hatchery. By Wednesday we are 75% complete at Hidden Falls, 50% complete at Gunnuk Creek and 40% complete at Medvejie. Currently Medvejie appears to be on the tail end of their summer chum recruitment and will like be short of their 30m goal by ~8m. Both Hidden Falls and Gunnuk Creek look like our pre-season brood stock escapement goals will be met. Unfortunately both of those facilities are running greater than 60% male, which on a normal year would indicate we are less than halfway through the return. This year though we have seen a sharp drop off on chum returns and will not likely reach a 50/50 sex ratio on the overall chum returns at those two facilities, similar to last year. A shortfall at Medvejie will be backfilled from Hidden Falls or Gunnuk Creek assuming brood is available.
Returns of fall chum are just now beginning to show up. This past week the catch at Deep Inlet has seen a slow increase and the sex ratio has climbed back up from a low of 39% male in stat wk 29 to 68% male in stat wk 30. There are a few early Crawfish Inlet chum beginning to return to the area with several trollers working the outer West Crawfish area this week. Currently there are scattered jumps in the outer West Crawfish area with little sign further east in West Crawfish or the Crawfish Inlet SHA. Cost Recovery in Crawfish Inlet will begin next week, likely on Wednesday or Thursday and continue until the goal is achieved. Progress toward the goal can be tracked at the following web page link:https: //www.nsraa.org/?page_id=5448
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