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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 […]
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August 25th-Deep Inlet to reopen Tuesday August 26th - Cost recovery has been completed for Deep Inlet. The Deep Inlet THA will reopen starting Tuesday with the following rotation for this week(stat wk 35)-Tuesday-Troll, Wednesday-seine, Thur/Fri-gillnet, Saturday seine. Next week the Deep Inlet rotation will revert to the regular schedule of Sunday-seine, Mon-Wed-gillnet, Thur/Fri-seine and Saturday-troll. The ADFG announcement should be out shortly.
August 22-Deep Inlet Cost Recovery Progress Update - Based upon Friday morning Deep Inlet cost recovery progress, a Deep Inlet reopening announcement will not be issued at this time. At current harvest rates it is unlikely our cost recovery goal will be met by end of day Saturday. The next potential reopening announcement has been pushed back to Monday, August 25th and will […]
Return Update-August 19th - Deep Inlet Last week a total of 276,000 chum salmon returned to Deep Inlet. The majority of the harvest, 156,000, occurred in the pink salmon seine fishery in Eastern Channel. Troll harvest in Sitka Sounds also increased last week with approximately 60,000 chum harvested by 67 troll permit holders. An additional 35,000 chum were harvested […]Return Update-Stat Wk 26
All NSRAA Chinook and chum returns through Friday June 27th appear to be on, or just above, our pre-season forecast. Return timing this year appears to be tracking with the long-term average for each site, in contrast to last year with strong early chum returns. Medvejie Hatchery Chinook returns continue to remain steady after a slow start in the spring troll fishery and it appears we will meet or exceed our pre-season forecast of 24k adults, which would be the largest return in a decade.
Chinook
Spring troll harvest of AK hatchery chinook through stat wk 25 has totaled 2,538 chinook with 1,854 of those NSRAA produced. Of the NSRAA production 70 came from Hidden Falls production and 1,784 from Medvejie. We have made steady progress on securing Chinook brood stock at Medvejie and as of Friday 6/27 have secured approximately 50% of our brood needs. We anticipate by end of next week we will likely have sufficient Chinook brood secured.
Chum
Hidden Falls-Return numbers and timing continue to track our forecast and approximately 61,000 adults were harvested in stat wk 26. Stat wk 26 harvest of 61,000 is 3 times the long-term average harvest for that stat week. Samples from Sunday 6/22 indicate 80% male and 80% age-4 adults and a 7.8lb average. Seine effort on openings continues to increase with 28 boats participating in the Thursday opening this week. Hidden Falls will remain open through the July 6th opening at time it will close in order to complete cost recovery and collect brood.
Deep Inlet-Deep Inlet returns, similar to Hidden Falls, is also tracking with our forecast for this stat week. Harvest at Deep Inlet will likely also end up around 60,000 fish, which is double the long-term average for this stat week. Sex ratio of adults this week is slightly above 80% with 75% age-4 and 25% age-5 and a 6.9lb average. Deep Inlet will close to common property fishing end of day after troll on Saturday 6/28. Deep Inlet cost recovery will begin Sunday or Monday next week and the THA will remain closed until cost recovery is complete. Deep Inlet will reopen for one week, stat week 32, regardless of cost recovery progress. Cost recovery progress is updated daily on our website homepage.
SE Cove/Thomas Bay- Harvest at SE Cove has been above average for this time of year and is tracking ahead of our forecast with a total of 20,000 fish harvested this week. Typically SE Cove returns begin to build a week or so later than Hidden Falls which makes this early harvest encouraging. Additionally, the Thursday harvest this week had a 92% male ratio and a 7.2lb average. Age data is not available yet for yesterday’s harvest but will be posted on the SE Cove in-season fishing page as soon as it is available (SE Cove in-season fishing page ). SE Cove will close for cost recovery after the July 4th gillnet opening. Thomas Bay has had limited effort and harvest to date.
Test fishing at Hawk Inlet and Point Gardner is currently ongoing and that information should be available Monday June 29th.
UPDATE! – Fish Feed Bag Sightings
UPDATE: July 1, 2025:
Following our press release, NSRAA staff have been hard at work both recovering bags and gathering information on their distribution as well as other cleanup efforts. To date over 2,100 bags have been recovered and we are hoping you can help us continue by reporting your sightings using our interactive survey tool linked below!
REPORT YOUR FEED BAG SIGHTINGS HERE
SE Alaska Marine Debris Fish Feed Bag Sightings: On May 20th, 2025, NSRAA was contacted by a good Samaritan vessel that discovered a large quantity of salmon feed bags adrift in the lower Chatham Strait region near entrance to Frederick Sound. NSRAA is a regional private non-profit salmon aquaculture association based in Sitka. NSRAA operates salmon enhancement hatcheries and projects in the northern portion of SE Alaska.
Beginning the following day, May 21st, NSRAA initiated efforts to ascertain location, distribution, and origination of the feed bag debris. This effort was performed by NSRAA staff in vessels and with aerial spotting via float plane. NSRAA observed and recovered numerous feed bags and was able to ascertain by production lot and date numbers on the bags that these were used at our remote Hidden Falls Hatchery in 2021.
After this discovery of origin, NSRAA contacted Lituya Freight Runners based in Petersburg, the contractor who removed this refuse from our facility in 2021. The contractor was notified of our discovery and informed NSRAA that this refuse was not delivered to Petersburg per arrangement, but stored at a remote location, between Hidden Falls and Petersburg, on a barge for the last 4 years. It appears this barge was moved out of the remote location immediately prior to the good Samaritan sighting of feed bag debris on May 20th.
To date the contractor has not made efforts to recover the feed bag debris. NSRAA was informed by the contractor today, June 13th, that they are in the process of beginning those efforts and will be in the Chatham Strait area next week. NSRAA has mobilized all available resources in response and to date has recovered approximately 1,100 individual feed bags since May 20th. Our first priority is to find and remove this unintentional marine debris and to engage the responsible party, the contactor in this effort immediately. NSRAA encourages those who have sightings of this debris to report their location, numbers and disposition (i.e. recovered and disposed of, or left in place) to the Southeast Alaska Commercial Fishermen Marine Debris Clean Up program at the following email address-seakmarinedebris@gmail.com, or directly to NSRAA.
The NSRAA board of directors has determined that recovering as many feed bags as possible is a high priority issue, which has also incurred and will continue to incur expenses. The NSRAA board will be engaging in future discussions concerning the Lituya Freight Runners contract.
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