Alaska Chinook Salmon Stocks

[Saharit]

For those that fish for kings in Alaska, you know there has been a prolonged period of declining stocks particularly impacting famed rivers such as the Kenai. I stumbled on the attached Chinook News which was just released last week by the ADF&G.

http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/home/ ... 014_n1.pdf

Some very interesting data and historical perspectives. ADF&G’s initiative to study 12 river systems throughout Alaska over the next five years will hopefully shed some light on salmon stock trends to test, as suggested, if the problem lies mostly in the marine environment and if recovery is inevitable. Likely will shed some light on our situation in Washington as well.

-Troy

[Nelly]

Hey S,
Thanks for posting that and there is a lot of interesting and troubling material there.
For me the biggest takeaway is the chinook bycatch in the sockeye fisheries.
When is Alaska -and Washington & Oregon- going to stop the gill netting and start fishing selectively?

[Saharit]

Tom, you bring up a great point.

In the Impact of Bycatch section, the publication provided some statistics on pollock bycatch, but did not address gillnetting or purse seining. Thinking about that omission a bit more, is it very odd given sockeye runs have been significant especially in rivers such as the Kenai which has been setting records (larger sockeye runs seem correlated with lower chinook stocks).

So ADF&G either does not know the impact of bycatch from gillnetting or purse seining or purposely excluded it given politics ( ). It will be interesting to see the study results, especially if ADF&G is willing to step up and tackle the gillnetting or purse seining issue.

As for Washington State, I am not a big fan of our initiative voting process, but perhaps we need someone or our even our advocacy organizations to step up with an initiative to finally ban gillnetting and provide better monitoring on purse seiners. You have to wonder whether Oregon, Alaska and even Canada would follow if regulations were passed in Washington.