Daily Sitka Sentinel

Pink Salmon Catch On Way to Record

By TOM HESSE
Sentinel Staff Writer
    This summer hasn’t been a good year for pink salmon: it’s been a great year.
    “The pink numbers are looking fantastic. It’s really looking like a return like we haven’t seen in a very long time,” said Dave Gordon, area management biologist for Fish and Game. “At the rate that we’re harvesting right now it looks like we’re on track to break a record.”
    The current record, Gordon said, was set in 1999 at 72 million pink salmon caught in the Southeast region in the purse-seine fishery. Around this time that year, the fleet had pulled in over 16 million pinks
    This season, the regional numbers were projected at 54 million fish and by the end of last week Gordon estimated the actual number of fish caught had cracked 40 million.
    In the Sitka area – which includes the waters around Baranof Island, Hoonah Sound and West Chichagof Island –  around 6.4 million pinks had been caught as of last week. The average is 5.2 million and the record, which was set in 2011, was 11.4 million fish.
    “We’re looking like we’re going to break that,” Gordon said.
    And the numbers could spike this week.
    “When you look at where the harvest typically peaks it’s not till next week. When we get to the highest peak in the year it’s usually in the middle of August,” Gordon said.
    Local processors have been doing their best to keep up with demand but limits have been placed on what processors can take in from a given boat.
    Tim Ryan, assistant manager at Sitka Sound Seafoods, said they’re “up to their arms in fish” and doing the best they can to process the bounty.
    “Obviously, we try to maximize what we can process, but the key thing is to maximize the quality of the fish as well but we’re trying to be as timely as we can be,” Ryan said.
    Sitka Sound Seafoods can process 300,000 to 400,000 pounds of fish a day. Ryan added that the limits they’ve placed vary depending on how backed-up the plant is. 
    Gordon said the data didn’t suggest that the run was especially early this year. Fish and Game monitors the fish heading inland and can evaluate the timing of the run based on the gender of the fish.
    Early in the run the majority of fish heading upstream are male and at the peak of the salmon run it’s a 50/50 split between male and female salmon. Once the run has peaked it’s a predominantly female group heading up stream. Gordon said the ratio is balancing out but it’s not quite to the 50/50 split that signals a peak.
    Pink salmon live in a two-year cycle, Gordon said, and over time odd-numbered years tend to have a stronger showing than even-numbered years. This year goes well beyond that, however. Gordon said a mild winter and good ocean survival rate certainly played into the big year but it’s difficult to explain why this happens to be one that could rewrite record books.
    The banner year isn’t limited to just pink salmon, either. Coho salmon are keeping trollers and processors busy as well.
    Grant Hagerman, assistant troll management biologist, said the coho numbers are as good as they’ve been in a decade. During a typical fishing season, Fish and Game will close the fishery for a few days in August to allow the salmon to run. Hagerman said that’s not likely to happen this year and the last time it didn’t happen was in the middle of Bill Clinton’s first term in office.
    “As far as catch rates are going, we have to go back to ‘94 to see anything like this,” Hagerman said.
    “What’s interesting to me is that we’re getting such a big run on other fish too,” Ryan said. “I think we all expected that it was going to be a big pink season but we haven’t seen a troll coho season like this since 1994 ... and that’s kind of strange because the fish are on different life cycles.”
    Hagerman said some of the same things that helped pinks survive, like a warm winter, obviously help the coho as well but there are very few other correlations to tie the success of two different species together.
    “It’s not necessarily the case. A couple of years ago when the pink returns were tremendous, the cohos weren’t necessarily the same,” Hagerman said.   
    Gordon said the high numbers of fish mean that some areas aren’t being fished at all because fisherman don’t need to venture out to pull in the fish this year. He added that from a management perspective, the biggest challenge now is the low river levels.
    The recent stretch of sunny weather has dropped levels in the streams, making it tougher for salmon to spawn.
    “There’s obviously nothing we can do about that as managers besides be concerned about it,” Gordon said.