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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 […]Aug 6 Weekly Update
We have made strong progress at Hidden Falls this past week and have taken 130 million chum eggs and gone through 150k fish. We have taken an additional 5 million chum eggs at Medvejie for the Hidden Falls stock component leaving an additional 55 million to go. Chum eggtakes are continuing at both Hidden Falls and Medvejie. It is still to early to determine if we will make the entire goal of 190 million. The numbers of chum entering Kasnyku Bay is slowly diminishing each day although it would be unusual for the run to entirely shut off this early. We continue to collect chum at SE Cove but there the run has turned into a trickle with only 3,000 fish collected since last week. We will attempt to fish again tomorrow at SE Cove for brood collection and that will likely be the last of the effort there. We do have to additional backup options for Hidden Falls chum, we can take up to 10 million Medvejie fall stock chum to replace a shortfall in the Hidden Falls stock. In addition if DIPAC or Port Armstrong has any surplus chum after making their goal (questionable), we can utilize those stocks to replace any shortfall at Hidden Falls.
This past Monday through Wednesday we harvested 100k lbs of chum from Crawfish Inlet for cost recovery. This is an increase from a catch of 15k lbs the week before. Overall not large numbers but the chum are big, bright, 80% males and over 8lb average. All cost recovery has occurred in the SHA which is slightly early for fish to be pushing into the Inlet at this point in time. This next week the troll effort in West Crawfish and the Crawfish Inlet SHA during the coho troll closure will be a good indicator on how the run is building. Plan is to return to the rear half of Crawfish Inlet on Monday for cost recovery to clean up what has built up since Wednesday. Volume and fish quality will determine how cost recovery proceeds next week. If the current trend in numbers continues next week should see a significant increase in volume. Deep Inlet has slowly picked up the last few days and is appearing to be following the Crawfish Inlet trend.
Coho have started to show up in better numbers for the troll fleet and the Deep Inlet and Bear Cove releases combined catch to date is just over 10k. Deer Lake has a catch of over 3,000 with Hidden Falls trailing at around 1,200. There are reports of better than usual coho catches in the sound which could be an indicator of good survival of our local releases. Still a little early to know how strong the run will end up but is an encouraging sign after the slow start to coho fishing.
July 30 Weekly Update
This past week we have seen continued improvement in brood stock numbers at Hidden Falls. To date we have gone through 75,000 chum brood and taken 70 million chum eggs. We have secured the 56 million portion for release at Hidden Falls and by Friday we should have the 20 million for release from Bear Cove secured and will be working on the 20 million brood stock release for Gunnuk Creek Hatchery over the weekend. The next priority of projects in order is 24 million Deep Inlet, 45 million SE Cove and 25 million Thomas Bay. While we still have a long ways to go there has been a steady but slow recruitment into Kasnyku Bay with an estimated 10-20k adults outside the barrier net. We continue to have reports of jumps outside of Kasnyku and are hopeful we will continue to get recruitment for the next week or so. Approximately 20k chum adults have been transferred from SE Cove to behind the barrier net at Kasnyku Bay. These transfers will continue until there is no longer a need at Hidden Falls or the fish are not available at SE Cove. As at Hidden Falls the recruitment to SE Cove is slow but consistent.
On Thursday we had the first Hidden Falls stock chum eggtake at Medvjie which resulted in approximately 2 million eggs collected. These will offset any shortages from Hidden Falls and as these eggs are from 3 year olds only will be released from one of our remote release sites. It looks like there may be another 5-10k Hidden Falls stock chum in Bear Cove and we will continue to collect eggs from those as they ascend the fish ladder.
Cost recovery continued this week at Crawfish Inlet and 15,000lbs of chum and 300 chinook were collected. Although still quite small poundage the chum are big, bright males and the catch volume went up 5x from the previous week. Harvest has been hindered due to the large numbers of jellyfish and low numbers of fish. I anticipate this harvest increase to continue and next week should see the first significant cost recovery in the inlet. Cost recovery will continue to occur in the east half of the inlet unless large numbers of fall chum congregate in West Crawfish and ADFG requests we harvest those seen in specific areas. In addition if no trollers are observed actively fishing in the Crawfish SHA then the full SHA may be utilized for cost recovery.
July 23 Weekly Update
Returns across the board continue to under perform forecasts and this past week it has become clear Hidden Falls will not make brood stock goals. At Hidden Falls we are seeing less than 20k chum at the weir and barrier net with little activity in Kasnyku Bay. There continue to be reports of chum between Round Island and Takatz but their behavior is indicative of early fish staying offshore and not congregating into larger schools. A total of 16m eggs have been taken to date. In order to preserve the best opportunity for additional chum brood stock for Hidden Falls the Thursday seine opener at SE Cove was canceled. SE Cove will continue to remain closed until we have secured sufficient brood stock for Hidden Falls. Unfortunately this may utilize the remainder of the chum return to SE Cove. The Sunday seine catch at SE Cove was less than 10k chum and the build up since then has been weak. This morning we loaded approximately 4k live chum onto the tender Lady Rosemary for transport to Hidden Falls. They arrived at Hidden Falls around 1pm with less than 1% mortality. These chum have been placed into a holding pen for acclimatization and eventual release behind the barrier net to ascend the fish ladder. We continue to fish at SE Cove collecting additional brood stock. Due to the slow build up at SE Cove we will likely cease fishing at end of day Thursday and restart Monday.
Lady Rosemary offloading adult chum from SE Cove at Hidden Falls Thursday July 23rd.
As all of you are aware chum returns across the region are meager. Deep Inlet chum catch took a sharp drop this past week and continues to be very poor. It is clear there is a break between the early Hidden Falls summer run and the fall Medvejie stock return. Chip Blair, our Data Analyst, put together a chart looking back at 35 years of chum catch statistics through stat week 29 for Alaska. Not only is this years chum return poor for SE Alaska, it is the worst since 1989, statewide is also tracking similar (link to data https://www.nsraa.org/?page_id=4630).
This past Tuesday we collected the first chum cost recovery from Crawfish Inlet. This initial effort was to clean out the last of the returning Chinook to the project and to begin evaluating the numbers of chum in the Inlet. A total of 3,000lbs of chum were caught with a 10.2lb average and an 89% male sex ratio. Next week we anticipate sufficient numbers to begin cost recovery on a routine basis. Cost recovery will be limited to the east half of the SHA in Crawfish Inlet and will occur until the full goal of $4m dollars is harvested.
July 15 Weekly update
While returns to SE Cove and Deep Inlet continue near or on forecast, Hidden Falls chum broodstock remains our primary concern at this time. Few fish have pushed into the inner bay and what spotty information we have received does not indicate a large volume outside of Kasnyku Bay. While we continue to monitor the numbers returning to Hidden Falls it is becoming clear we need to begin implementing back up brood stock options for Hidden Falls chum. Our first two options utilizing DIPAC or Port Armstrong brood stock look to be marginal options at best. DIPAC is already looking at moving fish from Amalga Harbor to Gastineau Hatchery and the Port Armstrong return is not looking strong either. NSRAA began preparing for this type of shortage over 3 years ago and we now have the Hidden Falls chum brood stock returning to both Gunnuk Creek and Medvejie Hatchery. While the numbers are not large, as all returning fish are 3 year olds, we will be taking eggs from both Gunnuk Creek and Medvejie returning Hidden Falls stock chum to make up any shortfall at Hidden Falls. Unfortunately as the numbers of fish returning to those two facilities are small, this also means we will likely need to close for Hidden Falls brood stock one of the few bright spots in the SE Alaska seine fishery, SE Cove. We will be collecting otolith and sex ratio information first thing Friday morning from the Thursday catch at SE Cove. Decision will be whether to close SE Cove Sunday or let it go one more time and close next Thursday. We have the ability to utilize up to 55,000 adults (~55 million eggs) from SE Cove. This summer is the first year NSRAA has placed a port sampler in Petersburg to help gather otolith and scale samples from the developing fisheries at SE Cove and Thomas Bay. The ability to gather reliable information real time from Petersburg is critical for decisions like this one. While I continue to be hopeful that Hidden Falls will still produce sufficient brood stock the reality looks less likely with each passing day.
July 8 Weekly Update
A gradual improvement has occurred at all of NSRAA return sites since last week. This past week we have seen an increase in chum catch at both SE Cove and Deep Inlet with a total Deep Inlet catch of 37k for stat week 27. The increases have put us back on track with our forecast curve for this point in the season. While that is great news, my optimism is tempered with the state and region wide return failures, male chum sex ratio lower than would be anticipated for this point in the run, and average chum size dropping to 6.2 lbs at Deep Inlet. There are reports of new chum moving into the Hidden Falls THA but they continue to stay offshore and not moving into Kasnyku Bay. We continue to monitor the Hidden Falls chum return and evaluating options if run is short of brood stock needs. At Medvejie our concern with the Chinook brood stock has been minimized. Strong recruitment over the past week has put us over 80% of our total Chinook brood stock needs and a closure for sport and commercial harvest doesn’t appear to be necessary at this time. Overall good news on the progress of our returns but much uncertainty and angst remains on how the season will play out.
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