Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Local sockeye and coho salmon runs are expected to be average this season, while the Chilkat king salmon run is projected to fall below the state’s escapement target range.

Across Southeast Alaska, the pink salmon harvest is expected to be below average, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The department published its 2022 salmon run forecasts statewide earlier this week. The local estimates for coho, sockeye and chum are based primarily on parent-year catch and escapement data and are qualitative. They shouldn’t be considered official forecasts, said Fish and Game commercial fisheries biologist Nicole Zeiser.

The department’s Chilkat king run forecast is 1,550 large fish, below the lower bound of the escapement goal range of 1,750 to 3,500. (“Large” fish means ones that are 28 inches or longer.)

“The forecast is below goal mostly because the bulk of the mature run should be comprised of five-year-olds from the 2017 spawning event, which was the second lowest on record,” said Fish and Game sportfish biologist Brian Elliott. He added that the 2017 Chilkat escapement estimate was 1,173 large spawners.

Chilkat kings have made the state’s escapement target for the last three years, after failing to do so six years in a row. In 2018 the stock hit a record low, at fewer than 900 fish, and was designated a stock of concern by the state Board of Fisheries. Last year the run well exceeded the state’s 1,500-fish estimate, and Elliott said he hopes this year’s run will again exceed expectations.

Given the low estimate, sport fishing for kings will be prohibited in the upper Lynn Canal for the fourth straight year from April 1 through December 31, Fish and Game announced in February. Chilkat Inlet will be closed to king sport fishing through July 15 and no retention will be allowed through the end of the year.

This year’s Chilkat coho and sockeye runs are projected to be average, while the state didn’t make a prediction about the chum run due to an issue with data collection during the parent year. The Chilkoot sockeye run is also projected to be average. (The department doesn’t forecast the Chilkoot chum run.)

For Chilkat coho, parent-year escapements were 66,000 fish in 2018 and 36,154 in 2019, both within the escapement goal range of 30,000 to 70,000 fish.

Berners River, north of Juneau, also is a spawning ground for the coho stock that supplies the Lynn Canal’s drift gillnet harvest, and parent-year escapements for the Berners run were 3,550 and 9,400 fish, just below and above the escapement goal range of 3,600 to 8,100 fish.

Zeiser said ocean conditions and survival data from federal trawl surveys in 2021 also indicate that coho salmon returns to Lynn Canal will likely be average this year.

For Chilkat sockeye, parent-year escapements were 87,600 fish in 2016 and 88,200 fish in 2017. Five-year-old fish account for 62% of the return and six-year-olds account for 33% of the return, Zeiser said. The Chilkat sockeye escapement goal range is 70,000 to 150,000 fish.

Chilkat sockeye failed to meet the state’s escapement goal in 2021 for the second year in a row, and only the second time since 2007, even though parent year runs were strong. Zeiser said it’s not clear why returns were so weak for the last two years.

Data collection from the Chilkat fish wheels was compromised due to the Haines Highway construction project in 2018, the parent year of next fall’s chum run, so the department doesn’t have reliable escapement estimates to form the basis of a chum run forecast, Zeiser said.

For Chilkoot sockeye, the 2017 parent-year escapement was 43,000 fish, within the escapement goal range of 38,000 to 86,000 fish. Five-year-old fish account for 76% of the Chilkoot return, Zeiser said. She added that strong zooplankton and presmolt estimates from data collected in Chilkoot Lake also suggest there will be an average sockeye run.

The run last year was strong, estimated at over 98,000 fish.

The state is forecasting a below-average pink salmon harvest regionwide, at 16 million fish.

The recent 10-year average harvest is 34 million pink salmon, and the recent average even-year harvest is 18 million.

“Parent-year pink salmon escapements in 2020 were very poor throughout northern inside waters and the escapement goal was not met,” Zeiser said. The juvenile pink salmon catch per unit of effort from the 2021 surveys in Icy and Chatham straits was the second lowest index in 25 years of surveys, Zeiser said.

She added, though, that the department would consider opening areas in the Lynn Canal to pink salmon harvest if the runs are “strong enough to achieve escapement management targets and provide for harvestable surpluses.”