The general king salmon season for this area will be over in a couple of weeks. King fishing in the Eastside streams has this coming July 4 three-day weekend and then it’s done. Last week, Fish and Game closed both Bird Creek and Ship Creek, two very popular Anchorage area fisheries, to king salmon fishing for the remainder of the season due to poor returns.

The Deshka River was closed to king fishing a couple of weeks ago, also because of poor run strengths. I recently spoke with Dave Rutz, the Sport Fish Division area management biologist for the Cook Inlet Northern District. He commented that, while the 2009 king returns were shaping up to be better than 2008, the projected escapement for the Deshka was still going to be below the minimum level Fish and Game has determined is necessary to maintain a healthy king salmon population.

This subpar return strength is causing a lot of concern, not only for those biologists tasked with sustained yield management of the fisheries resource, but also with the many user groups who rely on a healthy king salmon return either for their livelihoods or to put food on their family tables. The economic losses due to the poor king returns will have negative consequences for the Valley businesses that rely on sportsfishing as a significant contributor to income. How negative? Here’s a little background.

The Sport Fish Division contracted for a study of the impact of sportsfishing on the state’s economy a couple of years ago. This study was done for calendar year 2007 and was released to the public at the beginning of this year. The overall economic contribution statewide from the sportsfishing industry is about $1.4 billion per year.

This includes dollars spent by resident and nonresident, guided and non-guided anglers for travel, food, hotels, fishing tackle, boat purchases, gas, and everything else associated with sport fishing. Of that total amount statewide, about $733 million was generated in the Cook Inlet region, a little more than half of the statewide total.

The study was not designed to break out the economic contribution from one specific fishery, like kings, in a specific area, like the Mat-Su, but I think one could reasonably assume the king salmon sport fishery in the Valley was a big piece of that $733 million contribution.

In 2008, the king fishery in the Valley was also poor. However, a good silver salmon season during the second half of the summer probably saved several businesses from financial problems and a few from going under. The strength of this year’s silver return remains to be seen, so I suspect a few sportsfish-oriented business owners are sweating right now!

This economic study was done for 2007 — the last year when the Deshka River king salmon escapement fell within the acceptable escapement goal range. There were no king salmon sport fish closures or fishing restrictions that I remember in this area that year. If the same study had been repeated in 2008 or this year, we might get a more exact estimate on how valuable the king salmon sport fishery is to the Valley. I suspect the value would fall somewhere in the range of $30 million to $100 million per year!

That’s a quick look at the economics of the situation. While I “feel the pain” these businesses are experiencing, my biggest concern is the actual health of the resource itself. We now have had two years in a row where the Deshka River, the major king salmon producer in the Northern District, has failed to make minimum escapement.

Because of the 2006 major flood event which affected the entire Susitna Drainage, Fish and Game is expecting poor king returns from 2010 through 2012 or 2013. If that happens, an entire generation and then some of king salmon will have returned at below minimum escapement levels. That does not bode well for the sustained health of the resource.

Under ideal conditions, the king salmon population could take from five to ten years to fully recover after the flood effects have passed. We could be looking at around 2020 or later before king salmon sportsfishing in the Valley will return to what it was only a few short years ago.

If that comes to be, the state’s economy will have lost hundreds of millions of dollars, many businesses will have failed, and Alaska’s image as the place to experience world-class sportsfishing will have suffered perhaps irreversible damage.

Now would be a good time to really begin a thoughtful discussion of exactly how important our local fisheries resources are and to whom. If that discussion leads to the conclusion that significant management changes are necessary to serve the greater good of both the resource and the majority of users, then now would also be a good time to discuss what those changes need to be and begin the process of making those changes.

With a reasoned approach and all users looking toward the health of the resource first, perhaps these subpar escapement levels can be avoided in the future.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.