Rating the success of salmon returns

We’ve had an incredibly good salmon season so far in the Northern District. Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued another emergency order in the last week reversing the restrictions closing the Larson Lake system to the retention of sockeye salmon because the lower escapement goal for that system had been met.

The measure Fish and Game uses to determine the success of salmon management practices is how many escapement goals are met in an area. Our Northern District actually has very few hard-number goals for the five salmon species but a number of systems are assessed using aerial and/or foot survey counts. These surveys provide a trend over time of how the runs are doing in the particular system.

About six years ago, Fish and Game changed how they measured sockeye salmon escapement into the Susitna/Yentna system from sonar counting on the Yentna River to enumerating fish through weirs on three lake systems: Judd, Chelatna, and Larsen Lakes.

I was on the Board of Fisheries in 2008 when the board declared sockeye in the Susitna/Yentna system as a stock of concern. The sockeye returns had failed to make minimum escapements for five of the seven previous years. Since then, the sockeye escapements have been missed in seven of eight years. This 2015 return is the first successful full escapement of sockeye in this system, using Fish and Game’s chosen measurement methodology, in eight years and becomes only the third meeting of escapement goals in the past 15 years!

We had a good return of king salmon compared to the past seven or eight years and the coho returns were very strong this year as well. There are no escapement goals in the Northern District for either chum or pink salmon, but by all accounts, returns of both species were robust too.

Why is this year looking like the best overall salmon return in the Northern District in a decade or more?

The various current Cook Inlet fisheries management plans developed by the BOF, when properly followed and implemented by Fish and Game managers in both the Commercial and Sport Fish Divisions, appear to be working to allow a good commercial catch of fish in the Central District while protecting many of the fish bound for the Northern District.

Media reports in the last week place the commercial catch of sockeye salmon in Cook Inlet at about 2.7 million fish, slightly higher than last year’s harvest. According to information I received from a professional fisheries biologist under contract to the borough to assist the Fish and Wildlife Commission, the past five-year average catch percentage for the drift fleet on sockeye runs about 68 percent. This year, the drifters only harvested about 41 percent of the catch. Why is that?

Quoting from the consultant’s email, “The drift fishery enjoyed excellent seasons over the last few years as the east side set net fishery was restricted to protect kings. Much of the sockeye harvest was shifted to the drift fishery to regulate escapements, so the 2010-2014 drift fishery bounty was not typical. Commercial fishery managers typically try to split the sockeye catch about evenly between drift and set net fisheries. This year was a more even split than the drift fishery has seen in recent years.”

The consultant listed some reasons why the drift fleet catch was lower but stated, “So, this year’s commercial drift fishery was not as good as they’ve become used to but not a disaster. Catches were lower primarily due to (lower) fish numbers and movement patterns (possible warmer water influences), not the corridor restrictions (referring to the new drift fleet management plan developed at the 2014 BOF Upper Cook Inlet meeting). Even when the drift fishery was open area-wide, the sockeye catches were not particularly good. Might the drifters have caught more sockeye without area restrictions? Possibly but they would also likely have taken many more northern inlet sockeye and particularly coho. The corridor restrictions again worked very effectively to reduce coho catches (compared to what they caught in area-wide openers).

Two things you need to remember: first, we are still a long way from having a healthy sockeye run to the Susitna/Yentna drainage (making minimum escapements in only 3 of 15 years is not good!); and second, the drifters will try to overturn the current drift management plan, either in agenda change requests this coming BOF cycle or in the Cook Inlet cycle in 2016-2017. If they succeed, both our sockeye and especially our coho numbers will plummet in future returns.