A lucky angler with a child-size king salmon from the long-gone days when such fish were common in the Kenai River/ADF&G photo
Are Alaska salmon farmers to blame?
A news analysis
The Seattle-area-based Wild Fish Conservancy has dropped a bomb on the Alaska commercial fishing industry with a petition to the federal government demanding it list the state’s Chinook salmon as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Such a listing would almost certainly to lead to yet more restrictions on Chinook-directed fisheries, such as the troll fishery in Southeast Alaska and the drift gillnet fishery off the mouth of the Copper River, which has been found to intercept some Chinook bound for rivers in Southeast, British Columbia and the Lower 48. The number of those fish now caught in the Copper’s Chinook fishery is not large but appears to increase in years when ocean waters are warm which could present issues going forward.
There is also the possibility an ESA listing for the fish Alaskans commonly call “king salmon” could further affect some gillnet and seine fisheries where kings are taken as bycatch. Among these are the Cook Inlet set gillnet fishery, the Lynn Canal drift gillnet fishery in Southeast, and some other seine and gillnet fisheries in southern Southeast.
And then there is the not-so-small matter of Alaska’s massive production of hatchery pink and chum salmon given the petition’s claim that “the major causes of the region-wide declines in Chinook productivity and abundance are predominately due to factors in the marine rearing and migratory environment. Global warming and climate change along with massive releases of hatchery pink and chum salmon from Japan, Russia, and Alaska adversely impact marine food webs.”
That climate change and hatchery fish have combined to reduce king numbers is hard to prove beyond a shadow of doubt despite some strong indications – a big one being the large variations in pink salmon numbers between even- and odd-numbered years – that the open-ocean farming of pink salmon, or what Alaska farmers prefer to call “ranching,” has ecosystem-wide effects that lead to what have been called “trophic cascades.”
Still, direct evidence as to the harm to kings from pink salmon farming is not easy to find.
“Pink salmon in particular are known to consume a diversity of prey items in the marine environment, from zooplankton to herring and other fish, and compete with salmon species including chum, Chinook and sockeye salmon,” the researchers noted.
“It is unclear how (the) Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (EVOS) may have impacted Chinook salmon positively,” they added. “This result may be spurious, or Chinook salmon in particular may have benefitted from the substantial reduction in some predators; including the deaths of as many as several hundred thousand seabirds and severe losses to pods of killer whales as a direct result of EVOS.”
Nature is complicated.
The study would appear to rule out negative, nearshore interactions between young pinks and young kings, and it is in nearshore waters that biologists have long suspected the greatest losses among various species of young salmon competing with each other for food.
Still, some newer research has brought that into question.
“The period just after ocean entry (is) when most mortality is thought to occur,” Canadian David Welch and a team of scientists studying acoustically tagged salmon entering the Salish Sea at the southern U.S.-Canada border in 2011 reported. “(But) our findings provide a new perspective on where and when this mortality occurs.
“Our measurements of survival within the first weeks of the migration (when only one of every six out-migrating salmon smolts survived) can…be compared with total survival over the period of approximately two and half years until adult returns” at a ratio of one adult per 20 to 100 out-migrating juveniles.
Other studies have also pointed to potential problems at sea where salmon still live most of their adult lives in secret.
Researchers who published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications in 2020 reported a steady, decades-long decline in the average sizes of Chinook, coho, sockeye and chum salmon apparently tied to fewer calories in their diets.
This and other research has led to questions as to whether Chinook, coho and sockeye slamon – plus the people who fish for them – are paying a price for the Alaska’s hugely effective ocean-farming salmon business, which is not what was intended when the Alaska Department of Fish and Game instituted a well-intentioned fisheries, rehabilitation, enhancement and development (FRED) program in 1971 to revive salmon populations that had fallen to record low numbers.
A business takeover
Over the years that followed, however, the state judged the FRED program too costly to run and eventually turned state hatcheries over to private, non-profit cooperatives run by commercial fishermen who subsequently turned the hatcheries into money-making businesses that might today be harming wild salmon rather than helping them.
All of which should be of interest to Alaskans who care about wild salmon, but none of which will necessarily help the Wild Fish Conservancy put Alaska salmon on the endangered species list.
The group’s ESA petition appears likely to be turned down given the lack of a clear and consistent downward trend in the numbers of Alaska Chinook. The formal petition to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) pretty well concedes this status when it details returns to the Stikine, Taku, Karluk and other rivers falling short of spawning goals established by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Returns to these rivers have declined, but they are not falling. They might best be described as operating around new, lower means. And this sort of situation has been a reality for Pacific Ocean salmon runs throughout time.
Scientists studying the prehistory of Alaska salmon have been able to put together a 4,000-year timeline for sockeyes by studying nitrogen isotope data from sediment cores pulled from the bottoms of Alaska lakes.
Sockeye are unique in that their fry need lakes in which to over-winter, feed and grow into smolts before heading to sea, and thus sockeye spawn in river systems – such as that of the Kenai River – that contain lakes.
These nursery lakes, according to a variety of studies, provide insights into past abundance “because adult sockeye salmon, after gaining nearly all of their body mass at sea, return
to natal river systems where they spawn and die, primarily in lakes and associated feeder streams. Marine-derived nitrogen (MDN) from (these) decomposing salmon carcasses, which is enriched in Nitrogen-14 relative to watershed sources, is subsequently preserved in lake sediments and represents a time-series proxy of past abundance that can be sampled by coring lake sediments.”
When scientists looked at Upper Russian Lake in the Russian River system – a legendary, sockeye-filled tributary to the Kenai River – they discovered a 650-year period some approximately 1,500 to 2,000 years ago when salmon were far less abundant than they are today.
“Our results from Upper Russian Lake, together with previous research, suggest dramatic multi-centennial periods of lower salmon abundance in multiple systems across a wide
area of the northern Gulf of Alaska,” they concluded. “Though reduced freshwater carrying capacity from increased glacial meltwater input may have played a role in the Upper
Russian Lake salmon decline, the common marine-derived nitrogen anomaly in other clear-water lakes suggests that altered ocean conditions are a contributing factor.”
This conclusion tracks with what is known from historic times.
When the North Pacific slipped into a cold phase near the end of the 1940s, Alaska salmon runs began to shrink and finally hit rock bottom in 1974 when the entire statewide harvest of salmon totaled less than 22 million.
For comparison sake, the global-warming-boosted harvest of wild sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay alone was nearly twice that last season despite a downturn in commercial fishing effort because of the dismal prices being paid for sockeye. And the hatchery-boosted harvest of pink salmon in Prince William Sound was last season more than two and half times bigger that the all-salmon, statewide harvest of 1974, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Suffice to say, the data clearly indicates salmon systems can function at what ecologists might classify as high, medium or low equilibriums, and there is a big difference between species puttering along at a low equilibrium and those headed for extinction. This is especially true in the case of salmon, a highly resilient species, the numbers of which can vary greatly depending on survival in the invisible vastness of the ocean.
Still, the Wild Salmon’s Chinook filing is almost certain to force NOAA to confront – despite the agency’s historic, internal biases – the impact of Alaska’s pink and chum hatcheries on not just wild pinks and chums, whose genetics may have been altered by hatchery fish, but on all the other salmon that compete with the hatchery fish for food in the ocean.
Money, money, money
NOAA’s past support for open-ocean salmon farming needs to be dealt with because NOAA staff were among the first big supporters of turning the Alaska hatcheries over to private businesses to produce fish for profit.
This isn’t the way things started.
Almost all of the PNPs were and are run by associations controlled by commercial fishermen, and they quickly abandoned any idea of enhancing and rehabilitating wild salmon stocks in favor of making money producing large numbers of pink and chum salmon, the least valuable of Alaska salmon but by far the cheapest to produce.
The associations like to call what they do salmon ranching to differentiate themselves from the Norwegians, Chileans, Scots and others who raise much more valuable Atlantic salmon in net pens. But the reality is that the salmon ranchers and the salmon farmers are all engaged in the same activity: industrial agriculture.
Alaska ranchers trying to grow their salmon fry to the “optimum” size to survive after release in the North Pacific aren’t doing so to help natural runs of salmon. They’re doing so to maximize returns of adult fish to their hatcheries to put money in the pockets of the fishermen that run the hatcheries and to pay the costs of operating the hatcheries, which have themselves become businesses.
All that needs to be said about this has been said by the hatchery operators in their various Alaska public relations campaigns. When the major players banded together six years ago to fund a study of what their operations have done for Alaskans and Alaska salmon, the words “rehabilitation” and “enhancement” never appeared in the final report, and the word “wild” was used only to denote the money made off natural-origin fish versus hatchery-origin fish.
The main message in the report was simple: money, money, money.
This profiteering was endorsed by major NOAA figures in the early 2000s despite the fact there has never been an environmental impact statement written to consider the consequences of each year sending more than a billion hatchery salmon out to feed on the pastures of the North Pacific, where they compete with wild fish for food.
NOAA’s William R. “Bill” Heard, who on his retirement NOAA praised as one of the founders of the aquaculture industry in Alaska, in 2007 joined William Smoker from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in dismissing the observations of biologists who raised concerns about the state’s ever-expanding hatchery business and endorsed it as a scientific and economic success.
“We conclude that the current salmon hatchery program in Alaska, from its
beginning in the 1970s to the present, and despite some difficulties, conflicts and adjustments is a notable success.”
Upon Heard’s retirement in 2012, NOAA pointedly spelled out how it measured “success.”
Ever since, this has been the lens through which Alaska hatcheries are viewed: They make money so they are good.
State fishery managers have tried to whitewash the reality a bit by putting an environmentally friendly spin on the message that sidesteps the profit-motive, but the message is the same.
The “stakeholders” there would be commercial fishermen, and the “economic opportunities” would be profits for them and the people who run their hatcheries.
As for any enhancement, Webster’s dictionary defines the word as meaning “to increase or improve in value, quality, desirability, or attractiveness.”
Alaska hatcheries haven’t done any of those things because pink salmon, which produce roe highly valuable in Asian markets largely plus cheap flesh largely destined to be put into cans or converted into dog food, are not mareketed on the basis of improved quality, desireability or attractiveness.
Fish in a can looks like fish in a can whether salmon or tuna, and sales largely depend on price. About a quarter of the Alaska salmon harvest is still canned every year, according to a study done for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute last year, and quality is not the biggest concern.
A lot of Alaska pink salmon are now “headed and gutted…frozen, container shipped to Asia, thawed, skinned, canned, and exported to end markets,” the report concedes. “The quality of salmon canned from a frozen product is thought to be lower yet canning in a reprocessing country has other advantages. Manufacturers in Thailand can operate year-round and invest in processing equipment to serve emerging market preferences for smaller cans (eg.,80 grams cans increasingly sold in combination with crackers, salad packs, etc.) and pouches that appeal to younger, convenience-driven consumers.”
Few of those conveniecne-driven consumers live in the U.S.
“U.S. consumers have a taste for imported seafood, particularly shrimp, tuna, and farmed salmon,” the report said, “although Alaska pollock, cod, and crab are among the top ten seafoods consumed in the U.S. in 2020.”
Pollock, which McDonald’s uses in its Filet-O-Fish, was number five on the list of top-10 U.S. seafood products with Americans consuming less than a pound per year on average. Canned tuna was number three on the list at 2.6 pounds just behind salmon, most of it farmed outside the U.S., at 2.8 pounds and shrimp, again nearly all of it grown outside the U.S., at 5 pounds.
Chicken consumption, for comparison, tops 100 pounds per person per year.
Canned salmon didn’t even make the top-10 list for seafood which had at its bottom scallops of which Americans consume two-tenths of a pound on average per year. Canada and the United Kingdom have historically been bigger markets for canned salmon, but the UK market is now reported to be “collapsing.”
Overall, the canned seafood market is projected to grow in the future, but how much of that growth will involve canned salmon is unclear. The Associated Press in November reported a growing U.S. demand for “tinned,” ie. canned seafood, but the story focused on “sardines swirling in preserved lemons.
As for the overall value of Alaska salmon amid these market changes, the signs are not good. Alaska salmon were this year trading at record-low prices. But then again, the state’s hatcheries as they exist today are not managed to make money by selling high-value salmon.
They are now designed to make money selling large volumes of low-value salmon.
This isn’t the way it was supposed to work. When FRED came into being in the 1970s, the state focus was on the production of high-quality, high-value chum, sockeye, coho and king salmon. The big change in the program didn’t come until the state gave up control of the hatcheries and handed them over to people primarily interested in producing fish to make money.
“Why do hatcheries primarily produce pink salmon?” asks the Salmon Hatcheries for Alaska website.
The site doesn’t mention the promise made to Alaskans not long after they voted to pay for bonds to build the hatcheries back in the 1970s.
“The long-term plan for salmon in Alaska calls for nearly 143 million fish for harvest annually, of which 51 million are to be produced by enhancement and rehabilitation techniques,” Fish and Game declared in 1983. “Included within this harvest of 51 million are 25 million chum, 8 million sockeye, 1.5 million coho, and 300,000 Chinook salmon; the remainder will be made up of pink salmon.”
In the 40 years since then, the goals for Chinook and sockeye have never been met, and the goal for coho has been met in but one year. Chinook are the most valuable fish in the state, followed by sockeye and coho.
Not only have the hatcheries failed to meet the promised goals for the production of these three high-value species, the evidence tends to indicate it is more likely the hatcheries reduced the production of Chinook, coho and sockeye while pink production exploded far beyond the original objective.
The stated, 1983 goal for hatchery pinks was 16.2 million per year statewide. Prince William Sound alone produced nearly three times that many pinks this year with a catch of more than 46.8 million, according to a state report. Nearly 12 million of the fish in that catch, or about 73 percent of what was once planned to be the hatchery contribution to the “common property” pink return statewide, were awarded to Sound hatcheries to sell to cover their costs of operation.
This is how the system now works. Alaska has created two business entities – hatchery operators and commercial fishermen – that apply political pressure to increase hatchery runs of salmon in the 49th state with no real interest in the potential consequences for wild fish.
And while it seems unlikely that the Conservancy’s request for a ESA ruling will lead to a classification of Alaska king salmon as threatened or endangered, the filing might help expose the salmon hatchery business in Alaska for what it is – a business.
An open-ocean farming business little different from the net-pen farming businesses the state banned in 1989 with Alaska commercial fishermen hoping that would enable them to continue to dominate the market for salmon. It instead had the opposite effect.
Today, the net-pen farmers dominate the high-value end of the salmon market, which trades in fresh filets, and Alaska open-ocean farmers, or ranchers as they prefer to be called, dominate the low-value end of the salmon market, which trades in canned and pouched salmon, fish meal, pet food, fertilizer and some budget-priced, marginal quality pink salmon filets.
But both the net-pen farmers and the open-ocean farmers are in the business of industrial agriculture with the only real difference between them being that the farmers pay for the food to feed their salmon while the ranchers send their fish out to sea to graze for free on the pastures of the North Pacific.
Meat ranchers who are required to pay to graze their animals on the public lands of the American West can only wish they had it so good. And they not only have to pay to graze, they have to deal with ever-increasing demands from environmentalists and conservation groups to restrict or eliminate grazing programs that conflict with wildlife or fish or even endangered plants.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM)., which manages 245 million of acres of federal land in the U.S. West, is now actually in the process of considering whether some grazing leases should be replaced with “conservation leases” to protect wild resources.
Alaska’s ocean farmers have, to date, escaped the wrath of extremist environmental groups. They have, in fact, joined with them to block development of the proposed Pebble Mine in Western Alaska.
But it appears now the politics are changing as some environmentalists turn their attention to what actually has been happening to Alaska salmon rather than what might happen to Alaska salmon in the future.
Categories: Commentary, News, Outdoors
The lawsuit is a nothing short of a publicity stunt to feed the ignorant misinformation and drive funding. On the faq’s page they even admit that approximately half of the rivers that are monitored for escapement (and most aren’t) met or exceeded those goals for the last 5 year, of course they put it this way “The most recent 5-year average shows that approximately half the rivers failed to meet this crucial threshold.” They are suing to list all Alaskan King Salmon as threatened but they’ve simply avoided even trying to meet the standards that are set to begin the process to establish a species as threatened. They clearly are not aware of the size of the state let alone how many river systems support king salmon from SE to NW Alaska. But they got publicity and they’ve no doubt fleeced some ignorant folks of some cash.
Yes, as the story pointed out, they are unlikley to succeed with this petition. But, and what can’t be ignored, is that Alaska Chinook have been in an undeniable, downward trend for years now. It appears to me, based on my reading of the research by Welch and others, that the populations are stabilizing at a lower equlibrium, as we’re seeing on the Kenai.
But that’s not a given. It could be just another step on a descending staircase. We don’t really know what is going on with Chinook and haven’t for years.
Thus, the Wild Fish Conservancy has a valid argument to make that the feds have a legally mandated role to look at this steady decline and determine whether it is leading toward endangered status. And I really doubt that it’s much of a money maker for the group. Chinook aren’t as cuddly wolves or bears, which attract the big individual donations from the animal savers, and if it’s foundational funding an organization is after, the money is in climate change.
I’m confident the Wild Fish Conservancy could get a lot more foundational funding by targeting Alaska Chinook declines as something related purely to global warming: “Look, look, a warming North Pacific is literally cooking the biggest and most iconic Alaska salimon alive!”
Chinook aren’t as cuddly wolves or bears, but they are the Wild Fish Conservancy after all and it would be weird to try and get funding from cuddly wolves and bears.
They do reference climate change in their petition, in fact on their website they list a lot of threats in the following order:
Mixed-stock commercial fishing
Sport fishing
Bycatch in industrial trawl fisheries
Habitat threats from climate change
Logging
Mining
Lastly they add hatchery fish in both marine and freshwater environments
There are outside groups that would love to turn the whole of Alaska into a National Park. Using the iconic Alaskan King Salmon to shutdown the economy of Alaska is the goal of this outside environmental extremists, they tell us this, they aren’t hiding it.
Well, I can’t argue with your conclusion that the Wild Fish Conservancy is among groups wanting Alaska preserved. But that feeling isn’t limited to “outside groups.” There would appear to be almost as many in-state groups that feel the same, including some of the groups involved in killing Chinook.
And I wouldn’t say the goal of these groups is to shutdown the Alaska economy. Their goal seems to be more to shutdown parts of the economy – most notably mining, oil and gas development, and timber harvest. They seem fine with the commercial fishing, subsistence and welfare economies, and tolerant of some parts – if not all – of the tourism economy.
You might also note that whatever the Conservancy might say on its web page, its 64-page petition for listing makes it clear that “Alaska Chinook have suffered from chronically low abundance for much of the past two decades,” a claim that is largely true. That doesn’t necessarily mean Chinook are headed for extinction, but under the terms of the ESA, it does make for a valid reason for an explanation of why the low abundance DOESN’T mean they are headed for extinction.
Personally, I think the case can be made that ocean conditions have changed and Chinook have simple entered a new, lower level of productivity, but again that doesn’t mean the question the Conservacy raises can be ignored out of hand because of what one thinks of the groups motives. I’m not willing to dismiss the possibility that my conclusion is wrong and that we are beginning to see the beginning of the end of Chinook sans some more aggressive efforts to protect them.
Steve-o
What percentage of our rivers has equal or greater king salmon returns as compared to 40-70 years ago? Judging based on 5 years is pretty minimal. We haven’t had good king runs for over 30 years on many rivers . Most rivers poor for at least 15. That’s several generations. Sizes down across the state .
Your comment was pretty misleading.
Meeting an escapement goal is the minimum for a healthy river . The minimum means its on the edge of failure. multiple users probably sacrificed their fishing take of various species for years to keep kings at the minimum instead of falling below. Extreme limits all over the state. A lot of food and money lost. A value catastrophe.
So you’re statements are very misleading.
I just don’t understand why you would want to wait until kings are at the point of no return?
Do you live in Alaska anymore?
Do you have skin in the game of keeping Alaska financially healthy or are you just taking what you can get? While you personally can?
Why fight conservation efforts that will benefit everyone and I mean everyone later ?
Your angle seems incredibly short sighted and shallow.
DPR,
You will need to take up your issues with escapement and the use of only 5 years with the Wild Fish Conservancy, as my comment clearly quotes information from their website and their use of escapement and the most recent 5 year average (of something, they aren’t clear of exactly what the 5 year average is).
Just to be clear, and we’ve been over this before, conservation efforts and getting a listing on the Endangered Species Act are NOT THE SAMETHING. I am not fighting conservation efforts, no one I know is fighting conservation efforts. Pointing out that attempting to get all Alaskan King Salmon listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act is ridiculous is not fighting conservation efforts, it’s beyond ridiculous to say it is.
If Alaskan residency is your standard for allowable speech, why don’t you apply that standard to the outsiders in the Wild Fish Conservancy? And not that it is pertinent to the conversation, but yes I live in Alaska. What is shortsighted and shallow is not understanding what a listing on the Endangered Species Act takes, let alone what it means.
Steve o
Once again you fall back on blaming your lack of care for the resource on extraneous strawman arguments . . Telling me to take up my issues with someone else is just diversion from your failures to present a logical resource positive argument. Something you are incapable of in this case because you know that the resource needs help and you refuse to work for that help. Shame steve just Shame .
Regarding Alaska residency as a requirement for free speech you again fall back on projection and lies . I never said or insinuated anything of the sort.
Every man has free speech.
The problem is you’re free speech advocates for taking without protection of the resource which indicates you have inadequate skin in the game.
Also known as non residency. In your many comments you have said you live both in state and moved out of state . Which is it ?
Not that it matters as thats a distraction.
The question is – what will steve o do to preserve king salmon in Alaska beyond just taking of the resources and saying screw everyone else?
Awesome article. This is one of the most comprehensive outlooks on our current salmon situation. Thanks again for such a detailed article. Now we just need people to understand The sad state we have put ourselves in. It seems hard to find a solution in all of this, but wild salmon deserves our attention and dedication. We need some fundamental changes in the industry if we are to move forward.
Two thoughts come to mind.
First, what took them so long?
Second, it’s only a matter of time before this comes to Cook Inlet. Cheers –
Kings are the most incredible beautiful beast of our waters . King salmon steaks are magical. Strips are like gifts from god , king head soup is just an experience of its own . Do whatever it takes to protect and promote them .
When i was a young child their dead bodies littered the sandbars.
There is no question it was normal to see ones twice my length.
They were huge .
We could catch them easily with fish wheels or a pole . Kings were the essence of our life .
Those creatures are magnificent and magical.
No more .
Do what it takes to save the kings.
Interesting article. I am a cook inlet gillnetter, and a portion of my income goes to support the ciaa hatcheries. I am not a huge fan of hatcheries. I am more inclined to use those funds to support wild runs through habitat management such as beaver dam and pike removal, better passageways, etc.
That being said, in some instances, the private hatcheries benefit common use. A couple examples would be enhanced sockeye and coho in Ressurection Bay and the China Poot Sockeye run. There are many others.
If this lawsuit is successful, I think it could possibly affect some sport fisheries as well, such as the popular and ever growing Kachemak winter king troll fishery.
Thanks for keeping us readers informed.
If you’re giving money to CIAA, I feel sorry for you. That association is a business disaster. I’m not sure how it avoids a financial failure without a state bailout.
And we need to define “benefit.” Most of those Res Bay sockeye go to “cost recovery” for CIAA, and as for Alaskans in general the fish are really nothing but an alternative to going to the Kenai or Kasilof. Is there some shortage of sockeye in those two rivers? China Poot, for it’s part, is just a PR play and always has been.
Pretty much like the Ship Creek king fishery in Anchorage: “Yoo-hoo, look what we’re doing for you. Aren’t we great?”
The winter troll fishery, for its part, has always been operating on the edge. The only reason it survives is because the harvest is so small. Otherwise it would have been shut down long ago given that nearly the entire catch is B.C., Washington, Oregon and Idaho fish. According to the ADF&G genetics study, “from 2014 through 2018, the SWHS-estimated winter fishery harvest ranged from 3,173 in 2014 to 7,844 in 2018 (Table 1). The Outside Cook Inlet reporting group composed 99 percent of the winter fishery harvest for all years,” and only a few percent of that 99 percent were Alaska-spawned kings.
And, as we all know well, none of those Chinook systems south of Kennedy Entrance are experiening big runs of Chinook these days.
Been saying for years the Kings deserve protection under the ESA…they meet the criteria of less than half of historic runs…glad someone is stepping up to the plate. Of course, it’s from the outside since no organization in AK is really for conservation…especially not the AKF&G.
Where is the criteria “less than half of historic runs” come from, it certainly isn’t from the ESA. And which runs are you counting, all Alaskan kings or just certain rivers?
First we should be honest and change the name of our state fish to pink salmon.