Angry Canadians are going after the Alaska salmon fishery in the marketplace where propaganda can sometimes do some damage.
Ocean Wise, the conservation arm of the Vancouver Aquarium, has declared some Alaska salmon fisheries “unsustainable” and recommended against eating fish caught in those fisheries.
Though the organization didn’t call for a boycott of these salmon, its recommendation against eating them amounts to the same thing and could have a spillover effect on all Alaska salmon.
That area includes other Alaska seine fisheries, but the state bans trolling north of the Panhandle.
Who cares?
Whether the sustainability issue matters to consumers is debatable. Salmon markets seem more driven by the taste and cost of the product than by the buzzwords of the day, ie. “sustainability” and “organic.”
Alaska has some experience with salmon propaganda campaigns such as this. With help from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the U.S. version of the Vancouver Aquarium, the 49th state attacked “farmed” salmon more than a decade ago with some success.
Other major retail outlets, however, failed to follow the lead of Target, which kept farmed salmon off its shelves in favor of “wild-caught” salmon for eight years.
By then, the Monterey Bay Aquarium had switched sides and was recommending the farmed salmon that now dominate global markets. The Aquarium’s Seafood Watch list of “Best Choice” salmon is now led by farmed fish, preferably from recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), and wild fish caught with lift nets in the state of Washington.
A variety of wild-caught salmon from Canadian and U.S. fisheries make it on the Seafood Watch list of “Good Alternatives” list, but none of them are Alaska caught.
Alaskans worried
Still, Alaska officials are unhappy with what has happened in Canada and have attacked Ocean Wise while sidestepping the issue of Alaska interceptions of Canadian-spawned salmon.
“Instead, they attacked fisheries sustainably managed under the Pacific Salmon Treaty, the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the State of Alaska’s sustainable regulatory framework. We are deeply disappointed.”
Sustainability is, however, a moving target, and Alaska’s adherence to that standard has been called into question by a recent decision by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to investigate whether the state’s prized Chinook salmon, the largest of the Pacific salmon species, should be put on the endangered species list.
Declines in Chinook numbers are linked to unusually poor ocean survival, but the situation is complicated by Alaska management of pink salmon, the smallest of the salmon species.
Aided by hatcheries in both Alaska and Russia, so-called “maximum sustained yield management” of wild pinks, and an apparent competitive advantage at sea in the now warmer waters of the North Pacific Ocean, pinks have taken over the ocean range.
Still, the Marine Stewardship Council – a London-based nonprofit formed by the World Wildlife Fund to monitor global, ocean fisheries to ensure they are sustainable – officially recognizes Alaska salmon fisheries as well-managed and sustainable.
There have, however, been some points of contention over the years. The MSC put Prince William Sound in a review status in 2013 and it stayed there for years while MSC officials debated whether the area’s massive, hatchery-driven, open-ocean, pink salmon farming operations were harming wild fish.
Behind the scenes, there was reported to be considerable debate among biologists about that decision and about the pressure put on the organization by the state and largely Seattle-based processors of Alaska salmon.
Eight major Alaska salmon processors pulled out of the MSC in 2012, and there were threats that all Alaska fisheries, which together produce about 60 percent of U.S. seafood, would abandon the organization.
Since the MSC endorsed the Sound fisheries, however, the organization and the state of Alaska have enjoyed a friendly relationship. The MSC on Thursday issued a statement criticizing Ocean Wise, defending Alaska salmon harvests and warning that the Canadians were threatening “the effectiveness and impact of the MSC program.”
Some, including Alaska Commissioner of Fish and Game Doug Vincent-Lang and the Alaska Congressional delegation, have, however, questioned those relationships with “industry partners.”
The Alaskans last year accused the MSC of certifying Russian pollock harvests for financial reasons, which led the MSC to offer an earlier defense of how it operates.
“The (Alaska) Commissioner questions (our) motivation, stating instead we are seeking to protect our revenue,” that statement said. “But the MSC’s program is set up in a way, precisely to protect against this potential conflict of interest.
As nice as this sounds, some of those third-party, independent accessors have admitted to this website in the past that they didn’t feel comfortable offering their honest opinions on certain global fisheries for fear of losing MSC contracts.
Double standards
Meanwhile, what is obvious in the current debate is that Alaska has a double standard when it comes to ensuring sustainability.
There is one policy for state waters and another for Canadian and Lower 48 waters.
At this time the commercial set, gillnet fishery in Cook Inlet and the once most valuable sport fishery on the Kenai River have been largely shut down for years to stop their interceptions of late-run Kenai Chinook, or king salmon as Alaskans call the big fish.
Meanwhile, dozens of rivers in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest are falling short of spawning goals and the state continues to intercept fish bound for those streams.
There is no argument about this. The state itself has well-documented the Alaska interceptions.
Kings born in British Columbia, Washington state, Oregon and northern California are sometimes picked up in Alaska commercial fisheries in Bristol Bay, around Kodiak Island, in Cook Inlet, off the mouth of the Copper River but primarily in the historic Southeast fisheries which harvested 184,083 Chinook in 2023, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game data.
The number of Canadian Chinook added by harvests in the other Alaska fisheries appears to be measured in the thousands rather than the tens of thousands with catches of coho, chums and steelhead likely to be measured in the tens of thousands at most.
There is also little doubt that warmer waters in the North Pacific Ocean have delivered Alaska a three-decade-long salmon bounty while forcing Canada to suffer, but Alaska has done nothing to help its neighbor to the south.
In fact, the opposite.
It has steadfastly fought efforts to lower the interception of Canadian salmon in Alaska fisheries. After U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones in the federal court for the state of Washington ordered the Southeast troll fishery restricted in order to provide more Chinook for starving Puget Sound killer whales, the state of Alaska led an appeal of that decision and won.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the order saying the effects “on the Alaska salmon fishing industry outweigh the speculative environmental threats.”
The state remains adamant that when it comes to the fish of Canada and the Pacific Northwest, economics trump sustainability issues while in Cook Inlet it takes the view that sustainability trumps economics.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is now formulating a new “biological opinion” on the importance of the Southeast salmon to the whales. It is expected in November.
What it will say is anyone’s guess, which has left the appeals court judges wrestling with whether to deal with the substance of the case. At a Thursday hearing, the three-judge panel was pondering the timing, according to the Courthouse News Service.
“You’re just an eyelash away from a new report that moots the whole thing. What’s the point of us deciding this matter in this short interim period?” U.S. Circuit Judge Milan Smith Jr. was quoted asking an NMFS attorney.
She suggested the issue isn’t going away no matter what the new biological opinion because the whales still need food and any reductions in the Alaska fishery will cause economic impacts in the Alaska Panhandle.
But some of the judges seemed confused by the issue.
“Is it going to help the whales? Is it going to hurt the whales?’ Judge Mark Bennett was quoted as asking. “All we know for sure, I think, is that closing some of the fisheries is absolutely going to cause harm to inhabitants of Alaska and their various subsistence and cultural practices.”
Bennett had apparently been sold the latter idea by some in Alaska, but the issue before the courts has nothing to do with subsistence. The state has reported the subsistence harvest of Southeast Chinook at less than 1,500 per year, and the lawsuit filed for the Wild Fish Conservancy did not seek a closure of subsistence fishing.
Some of those fish would likely be caught in Canadian or Lower 48 fisheries if they were allowed to escape Alaska fishermen, but some would feed the whales and some would surely make it home to aid badly struggling Chinook populations which appear to be in ever worse shape south of the latitude of Alaska’s Copper River then north of that line.
And Alaska Chinook aren’t exactly in great shape to the north as evidenced by the situation on the Kenai and elsewhere in Cook Inlet, which once had thriving king salmon fisheries but does no more.
Wow, i dont think either one of you said one word i can believe.
I dont believe adfg either.
I believe , way to many hands into a fishery.
Dingle johnson
Pittman robertson
Coasta I conservation
Washington state noaa
Washinton state npfmca
Adfg, sport fish conservation org.
And then there canada
All conservation , giving billions
Still not quite right. You could link 90% of the troll fisheries to out of state production but most of the net fisheries, or at least many of them, are terminal fisheries that harvest primarily SE wild and hatchery fish. There is probably some small amount of mix stocks in the net fisheries but not as much and certainly not 90%.
That’s an assumption I’m not going to make. The net fisheries are allowed 7.2 percent of the Chinook from the negotiated allocation. That’s to cover their bycatch. SE wild production is now so low it can almost be ignored. And Alaska hatchery Chinook? It’s interesting to go through the appendix at the end of this study and look at how rarely they show up in the catch: https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/FedAidPDFs/FDS21-23.pdf
I’d agree with you that the percentage of BC/PNW Chinook in the catch of the net fisheries is likely less than 90 percent. I’d expect it’s somewhere between there and the 30 percent non-Copper River Chinook in that Chinook net fishery.
Whatever the case, the number appears so small as to get lost in the estimates and annual variation here. And I’m sure the Canadians would be thrilled if the troll quota for non-Alaskan fish was lowered to the 10,000 to 15,000 fish allocated to the net fisheries as unavoidable bycatch in those terminal fisheries.
And it is pretty much unavoidable. I lived and fished in Southeast for years and hooked Chinook at times in terminal areas swarming with pink salmon.
That’s odd. When I read the report https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/FedAidPDFs/FDS21-23.pdf, it says right in the abstract that the Southeast Alaska/Transboundary River driver stock is the largest driver stock contributor to both the troll and sport fishery harvest in Southeast Alaska. Here’s the quote from the abstract “Collectively, these 7 stock aggregates, referred to as driver stocks, accounted for 91% of the troll harvest and 95% of the sport harvest. The Southeast Alaska/Transboundary River driver stock was the largest contributor to both the troll (18%) and sport fishery (38%) harvest.” Alaska hatchery Chinook are a significant portion of the driver stock. It clearly states in the report that the type of analysis they use (genetic MSA) can’t differentiate between hatchery and wild stocks. The charts and plots in the report show Andrew stock as 25% of the spring troll harvest. These are primarily hatchery fish. Maybe I’m confused.
Alaska fisheries are often confusing, and what was isn’t always what is. That report did have Alaska stocks contributing a significant portion of the catch, if we can consider 18 percent significant. I don’t know if it is or isn’t.
The harvest of those premium-priced Copper River kings has sometimes been comprised of up to 30 percent non-Copper Chinook, and I’ve never seen anyone demand a “truth-in-advertising” disclosure on their sale saying “There is a three in 10 chance the Copper River king for which you are paying all this money is not truly a Copper River king.”
But that’s sort of irrelevant because those fisheries that were contributing 18 percent of Southeast kings are now tightly restrcited because returns to the transboundary rivers have gone the way of returns to the Kenai River. https://www.kstk.org/2023/03/22/southeast-commercial-salmon-fisheries-to-see-continued-restrictions-as-managers-try-to-preserve-kings/
This is what we do in Alaska when Alaska salmon stocks are faltering badly. We tightly restrict fisheries. We do not, however, apply the same standard to the fisheries in Canada or other states.
But let’s go back to that 18 percent “Alaska” harvest in 2015 because it needs further examination. Those “transboundary rivers” are so named because they head in Canada and reach the sea in Alaska. I’m most familiar with the Taku because an old Juneau acquaintance of mine, Paul Kissner, another guy who got mauled by a bear in an encounter that made mine look like nothing, led a lot of research on Taku kings.
About 90 percent of their spawning and rearing happens in Canada. The numbers for the other rivers are less or greater, but basically, we are harvesting a lot of Canadian spawned fish and the Canadians are getting few. Back in the day, it was about an 80-20 split or better in our favor on the Taku. I never had a problem with that. The fish spend most of their lives in marine waters off the coast of Alaska, and thus Alaskans deserve a fair share for the fish growing fat and big on Alaska’s pasture.
But when salmon runs are in serious decline, you have to ask yourself: What’s a fair share? How does a run get rebuilt if you don’t put fish in the river?
I won’t even get into the hathcery fish issue. The Alaska hatchery harvest in the commercial fishery is so small it’s not worth talking about, and the costs of producing those fish is huge. Nobody talks about the latter in Alaska, in large part because the costs don’t look good but end up being subsidized by Outside anglers thanks to the excise taxes on fishing gear. So what do we care?
Still, the state of Washington has publicly revealed the costs of production there where everything is cheaper to do than in Alaska: “Based strictly on cost per fish in the Puget Sound sport fishery for Chinook, the Hoodsport Hatchery yearling program ranks first (1st) in cost efficiency at $136 per fish harvested in the summer/winter combined fishery and $399 per fish harvested in the winter fishery.” https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/about/advisory/psrfef/docs/Final_Report_HSRG_to_PSRFEFOC_November_2018.pdf
One hundred thirty six dollars per fish is their BEST number. I’m confident we’re paying well over $100 per Chinook in Alaska. The hatcheries are nothing but a huge subsidy for the commercial fishery. It’s easier to make an argument for them in the sport fishery where somethig like Ship Creek provides entertainment for thousands or tens of thousands of people who never end up catching a fish, but even then….
I’m not sure the Ship Creek king salmon program would exist if Alaskans were held responsible for footing the total costs. But as the Alaska Department of Fish and Game notes, the two sport fish hatcheries the state still runs are “wholly funded by the sale of Alaska sport fishing licenses and matched by federal Dingell-Johnson/ Wallop-Breaux funds, derived from federal excise taxes on selected sport fishing tackle and equipment, and fuel taxes attributed to boats and small engines.”
So considering that most of the fishing license sale money comes from nonresident fishermen and all of the rest of the money basically comes from Outside fishermen, there is no real reason for us to worry about what those Ship Creek Chinook cost.
I was just pointing out that the southeast Chinook fisheries harvest wasn’t a 90% interception harvest. It was more like 90% minus 18% or approximately 72%. That is just for the troll fisheries and that the net fisheries in aggregate likely have an interception that is somewhat lower as many of them occur in terminal harvest areas.
Your comment “But that’s sort of irrelevant because those fisheries that were contributing 18 percent of Southeast kings are now tightly restricted because returns to the transboundary rivers have gone the way of returns to the Kenai River” isn’t really rooted in fact at those restrictions were already in place during the 2018 season, from which the numbers were derived. Look it up if you like.
Southeast Alaska hatcheries do contribute to catches for both commercial and sport fisheries. For instance, in 2021 Southeast Alaska hatcheries produced over 67,000 hatchery chinook which are part of the driver stock that supported 18% and 38% of the troll and sport catch, respectively. This is a number comparable to at least a couple Taku River’s Chinook salmon in total and more than the entire winter troll fishery catch. Prior to the downturn in Chinook numbers it wasn’t unheard of to catch over 80,000 hatchery kings in the combined sport and troll fisheries.
It might be of further interest to mention that many of the fish intercepted in the troll fisheries are also of hatchery origin. Chinook salmon would hardly exist without hatchery fish in the Puget Sound (87% hatchery) or the Columbia River (80% hatchery) or even the West Coast of Vancouver Island (40-60% hatchery).
Well, we appear to agree on one thing there – there is no doubt Lower 48 hatcheries are helping subsidize the Southeast troll fishery. As to whether those Lower 48 fish would exist without the hatcheries is now being vigorously debated as is the question as to how much the hatcheries actually help wild fish: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0289246
Since you’re obviously a fan of hatcheries, wouldn’t it be a great idea if the Southeast troll fishery were restricted to harvesting only Alaska-produced hatchery salmon paid for by trollers with all the wild fish – both ours and those of other folks – protected?
But obviously, the hatcheries would have to up their game a bit: 18% x 67,000 = 12,060, which would is orders of magnitude short of the existing harvests of struggling Alaska Chinook salmon and Chinook salmon spawned Outside of Alaska.
Thankfully, Outside sports – most of whom never fish Alaska – pay for their 25,460 (.38 x 67,000) while helping to subsidize some of the commercial fishery as well. So whre do the other, 29,480 go? Is that all cost recovery? Are the hatcheries (ie. farmers) actually getting more out of this than either the sport or commercial fishery?
That would be good business for them, but bad business for wild fish given that some of the latter get caught no matter where the ocean harvest occurs.
Now, with that said, I’ve got to add I really don’t understand the root of any of this exchange. I always thought of you as a conservationist. And here you are supporting the double standard of treating struggling salmon spawned in Alaska one way while treating struggling salmon spawned elsewhere in a different way.
I’ve been following and sometimes even contributing to literature on salmon for years and I am certainly a conservationist. Salmon and salmon fisheries are complicated and typically oversimplified in the media. The only reason I follow your reporting is that you do a much better job than most, but when one makes math errors one can and does create a narrative that isn’t based on facts. While this can stir people up and generate clicks or sell news media, it confounds the real issues. As I scientist I find it is better to work with real numbers to find solutions. I would say that is the root reason I am contributing.
My original comment suggested that 90% of Chinook salmon harvested in the SE Alaska chinook fishery were not destined for places in Canada or the lower 48. It had been demonstrated that approximately 18% of the Chinook troll fishery originated from SE Alaska/Transboundary stocks. I further suggested that the net fisheries probably had a much higher proportion of SE Alaska/Transboundary stocks due to their locations near terminal harvest areas. This is in fact the case. The combined seine and gillnet fisheries harvested a total of 32,657 fish in 2023 according to the Pacific Salmon Commission data. Approximately 26,400 (80%) of the Chinook harvested in the net fisheries originated in SE Alaska hatcheries. My point was that this number should be corrected. One shouldn’t assume a 90% interception of Canadian and lower 48 Chinook in a net fishery when the data show that 80% of the net fisheries catch came from SE hatcheries. So, if we were to rewrite your paragraph “Around 90 percent of those Southeast kings- or approximately 167,500 – could be linked to origins in Canadian and lower 48 streams and rivers, according to the state’s own studies, with maybe about 40 percent of that number-or around 67,000 Chinook-likely to have been of Canadian origin in 2023” it might read something like this.
Approximately 82% of the troll harvest or 117,000 and 20% of the net harvest or 6,500 fish could be linked to origins in Canada or the lower 48. Of these 123,500 fish approximately 40% or 49,400 Chinook were likely to have been of Canadian origin in 2023.
Your original computations are high by about 50%. That was my point. Your follow up comments were also in error. You were willing to make an assumption that was in clear error with the data (90% of the net fisheries Chinook catch destined to faraway places). You also suggested that Alaska hatchery chinook catches were hardly worth counting yet they contributed 80% of the Chinook in the SE net catches and about 8% of the troll catch. You are correct when you indicated that many of the Taku River fish spawn in Canada as do many of the Stikine, Alsek, and Chilkat River fish. The harvest split on these fish has since been revised and it’s a 50/50 split when there are enough to harvest. Many of these other SE/Transboundary stocks are all or mostly contained within Alaska. These would include the Keta, Blossom, Chickamin, Unuk, King Salmon and a handful of other minor contributions.
You also leave out the fact that these numbers were negotiated in a treaty between the western states and Canada and some of the costs of producing hatchery king salmon in Southeast Alaska were negotiated with the Pacific Salmon Commission back in 1985 when the trollers gave up a large portion of their fishery. You also failed to mention that Chinook fisheries continue to exist in Canada, Washington, and Oregon that exploit these threatened stocks. Many, if not all of these fisheries exploit these stocks at a much higher rate than the Southeast troll fisheries. Finally, you neglect to mention that Chinook returns to the Salish Sea in 2023 were the highest since counts began in 1975. The Salish Sea is home to the southern resident Orcas that many believe are being starved out of existence. What do we hear from the media about these record shattering Chinook returns? Crickets. Look it up. It’s all right here. Be careful. It’s complicated.
https://www.psc.org/publications/technical-reports/technical-committee-reports/chinook/ctc-data-sets/
Well, Ed; I’m going have to agree with you on some of thie, maybe most, and will correct for the net harvests. The story was over simplified.
That said, trying to make one data point – ie. the 2023 return to the Salish Sea – into something meaningful is foolishness, and you know it.
Explotaiton rates, meanwhile, are something about which could have another lovely discussion. The Canadians harvested about 100,000 Chinook last year. Theit hatcheries produced anwhere from 80,000 to 140,000 or so depending on survival. A lot of their harvest, as well as that in Washington and Oregon, is targeted on hatchery fish.
It’s a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggggggggggggggg stretch to declare their exploitation rates ihgher than ours. Possible, yes. How probable, hard to say.
The treaty is irrelevant. We all know the Canadians are wimps. If they weren’t, given the current situation, they’d be pushing a boycott of Alaska salmon to put real pressure on the U.S. Who knows how much damage they could do with a “Save Wild Fish: Boycott Alaska Salmon” campaign in the Lower 48.
Lastly, I hope to God no one down your way is catching Chinook from the King Salmon River. I used to deer hunt over that way some times at the end of the ’70s, start of the ’80s. The return then was tiny. I just pulled up the data now to see where it is now, and it’s tinier.
The average is down to 78 fish for the latest five-year period. That’s far below the old goal of 250 large spawners and way below the BEG that I see was revised downward to a minium of 120 kings. Why you would you even cite this as possible stock contributor is beyond me? It’s a river to which the state should trying to return ever last possible Chinook.
Hi Craig,
I can’t paste graphics on your reply or I would send you a plot of the exploitation rates. Not a stretch at all! Particularly when considering the returns to the Salish Sea. All of which have a greater Canadian fisheries exploitation rates than the Alaska troll fisheries. If I could I would send you the graph of the coded wire tag estimates. I don’t have the tabled data.
I only included the King Salmon River as an example of some of the small minor contributors. Other small Chinook streams that go without surveys and produce small numbers include Wheeler Creek, Chuck River, Dangerous River, Harding River, Farragut River, Grant Creek, Marten River, Aaron Creek, Eagle River, Tom Creek, Wolverine Creek, etc. It isn’t legal to harvest Chinook in freshwater in SE Alaska so those King Salmon River fish should be fine. I hope.
I’m not so sure mentioning the highest return to the Salish Sea in the last 50 years is foolish. Sounds like a scoop of I were a reporter. Absolutely crushes the previous years. Why isn’t this news?
Could it be because the Salish Sea isn’t 50 years old? It’s less than 15 years old: https://www.historylink.org/File/20344
Thus, there’s no good baseline data. Declaring last year a record would be like declaring the late-run Chinook return to the Kenai River last year a record, which it was. The 13,922 kings counted there was the greatest number since the state changed the counting system to fish 34-inches or bigger in 2020, but it was still about a thousand short of the minimum escapement goal.
And reported escapement prior to that have reached nearly 66,000. I’m confident there was some over counting in those with some of the Kenai’s supersize sockeye being IDed as Chinook, but total harvests – commercial, sport, PU, subsistence – in some past years topped 40,000, and we know those were all Chinook plus there were then in-river far more fish than there are now.
It was an observable difference, so one can ignore the sonar count if one so wishes and fairly figure 50,000 or more Chinook were returing the the Kenai at one time. Last year, the record year, you can’t even get to the 15,000 minimum goal if you add in the little harvest that occurred on these fish.
All of which is just meant to point out why “records” depend on baseline data. The Salish did get a big return of pinks (oh boy!) – https://nanaimonewsnow.com/2023/11/10/its-insane-to-be-totally-honest-pink-salmon-return-in-droves-to-big-qualicum-river/ – last year, and a good return of some hatchery Chinook such as those involved in the great “Whatcom Creek Salmon Massacre,” – https://www.cascadiadaily.com/2023/sep/29/those-whatcom-creek-salmon-are-supposed-to-die/ -but the returns of wild fish were a complicated mixed bag that looked good in some places and not-so good in other places. https://www.pacificfishing.com/featured_stories/1023_story1.html
The return of sockeye to the Fraser River, the biggest player in the Salish, was a bust. But enough of this.
At the end of the day, what the Canadians do or don’t do, and what the Oregon and Washington fishery managers do and don’t do, is just an attempt to rationalize what Alaskans aren’t doing: leaving other people’s struggling salmon to return to the streams of their birth.
And it’s amazing the abuses people are able to rationalize.
That said, when times are good, I beleive Alaskans should certainly be allowed to catch some fair share of the bounty of salmon that grow fat feeding in the Gulf off the Alaska coast, but times aren’t good. The “conservation” thing to do in current situation would be to restrict Alaska harvests of Chinook to what Alaska watersheds can produce. That harvestable surplus, sadly, isn’t much. We both know that.
Which is why you’re engaged in all sorts of word games here to try to justify what is done elsewhere as if everyone else is to blame for the problem. How about we fix it first in the part of Alaska living off other people’s Chinook because at the end of the day, it’s all as clear as the latest state genetics report states:
“1. The fine-scale reporting groups that contributed the highest proportion of Chinook salmon
harvest to the SEAK troll fisheries in AY 2019 from largest to smallest are South Thompson,
Interior Columbia Su/F, West Vancouver, North Oregon Coast, Washington Coast,
S Southeast Alaska, and Andrew. Other reporting groups, such as BC Coast/Haida Gwaii
and East Vancouver, were also major contributors during some of the seasonal fisheries.
“2. The fine-scale reporting groups that contributed the highest proportion of harvest to the
SEAK sport fishery in 2019 from largest to smallest are West Vancouver, Andrew,
S Southeast Alaska, South Thompson, Interior Columbia Su/F, and Washington Coast
reporting groups.”
South Thompson is, of course, the South Thompson River, the largest tributary of Canada’s Fraser River, and a system into which the Canadians pour significant money in the form of Spius Creek Hatchery Chinook. We don’t rebate them.
The other major contributors are more easily identifed by most readers: The Columbia River and Columbia hatcheries; West Vancouver Island streams, rivers and hatcheries; North Oregon Coast streams rivers and hatcheries; Washington State streams rivers and hatcheries; and then Southern Southeast streams, rivers and hatcheries.
The Thompson alone accounted for 24 percent of the Alaska troll the harvest in 2019. The troll harvest that year was the lowest on record – 110,000 Chinook – but primarily because of all the measures taken to protect struggling Alaska stocks. I think we can safely figure at least 80 percnet of the catch was other people’s fish. About the only Chinook fishery in Southeast that can be considered relatively “clean” is the inside sport fishery.
So a realistic quota for a Southeast harvest might be 20,000 to 25,000 wild Alaska Chinook plus whatever someone wants to pay to crank out of hatcheries at $100 per fish or more. As you know, I’m not a big fan of hatcheries given that accumulating evidence that they hurt wild fish more than help them, but I’m happy to make an exception for Chinook hatcheries given the low volumes at which they all operate.
How anyone can afford to produce many Chinook in Alaska sans subsidies from the excise taxes paid by Outside anglers is, however, beyond me. But maybe someone can figure out a way.
The DIPAC hatchery, which has become a nicely profitable business since Ladd started it, can obviously afford to produce some to burn up some of the revenue it generates from cost recovery harvests of chum and sockeye. I can remember the late Mr. Macaulay talking about his difficulties keeping that hatchery “non-profit”able in the way back 1980s. Spending some money to produce Chinook in the Juneau are can certainly help with that.
I don’t know that the other Southeast hatcheries are netting enough money to do this, however. I’d expect yu know better than me. I don’t see it as a great business model either, but it is the way of the world today. The Norwegians, Chileans and others farm salmon in one way, and we farm them in another.
None of this farming has anything to do with protecting or preserving wild Alaska salmon or wild salmon anyhwere, and that is the conservation issues of these times.
First, no it isn’t because the Salish Sea isn’t 50 years old. Regardless of when the Salish Sea became a popular name for the body of water it includes, the same stocks have been measured that contribute to this same body of water. Yes, when I was growing up on the Olympic Peninsula no one had ever heard of the Salish Seas but they were counting fish in the watersheds flowing into the Salish Sea.
It’s interesting that you mention the South Thompson stock as the largest contributor to the SE AK troll fishery because this is one of the wild BC stocks that has GROWN tremendously over the last 50 years and the 2023 return year on the South Thompson is a large part of the record returns to the Salish Sea in 2023. The escapement for South Thompson was well over 600,000 fish. So which stocks in particular are we trying to protect? Be specific because it makes a difference. The wild fish in South Thompson have never been doing better! Yes, they are primarily wild fish in a growing stock with a surplus of harvestable fish.
Finally, your previous statement that the Canadians harvested about 100,000 Chinook last year is far less accurate than your estimates of SE net fisheries interception of BC Chinook, which was only off by 50%. When I look up the BC catch for Chinook for 2023 the Pacific Salmon Commission data tell me they caught 631,000 Chinook. Quite a difference! Your narrative makes it sound as if we are taking all the fish from the poor Canadians, who are doing everything they can to protect their dwindling fish stocks. Same could be said about Columbia River fisheries that harvested 360,000 Columbia River fish. That’s been my point all along. The narrative should at least attempt to line up with the data.
I do agree that hatcheries and ranching has little to do with protecting wild salmon. It’s more about protecting salmon fisheries, many of which would fail to exist other than as a hobby or subsistence activity, if it weren’t for these hatcheries.
Yes, there was a huge return of 0.3 Chinook to the Thompson. No one knows why. What I haven’t seen is an average size for those fish. Having spent no time in freshwater before going to sea, these fish tend to be small. But the size is variable. Past data from various places puts mature fish at anywhere from 24 inches up to 36 inches.
Chinook in the Pacific have been shrinking for years now, so it’s possible these 0.3s were on the small end. I only mention this because, as you know, we have a 28-inch minimum size limit in Alaska and Canada has a 27-inch minimum. It’s possible a lot of those 0.3s made it back because they were shaken off by saltwater fishermen (commercial and sport) before they entered the Fraser River system.
And I stand corrected on the harvest. I pulled up the NPAFC number which was 109,230 for Canada last year, but that’s only the commercial harvest. With sport and tribal harvests, the Canadians do get to about 506,000 as I read the PSC report. I believe that 631,000 includes “incidental mortality.”
Whatever the case, a fair share of the more than 400,000 over the commercial harvest is “first nation” harvests or what we’d call “subsistence.” If the Canadians were Alaskans getting a “subsistence priority,” there would probably be a lot more pressure on the Southeast interception, but they’re not.
It’s OK if we take salmon out of the mouths of Native moms and babies in Canada.
I am glad to see that you admit hatcheries are a business, just like all other salmon farming businesses. They, however, do little to “protect” anything. And your claim that “many” hobby or subsistence fisheries would fail to exist without hatcheries is nonsense.
The biggest subsistence/PU salmon fisheries in Alaska – Yukon, Kuskokwim, Kenai, Copper rivers – take place in watersheds with little or no hatchery activity. The Gulkana hatchery used to supply a sizable chunk of CR fish – up to 30 percent or so in good years – but it has been sputtering badly now for years.
The forecast for the CR hatchery component this year was 49,000 or about 3 percent of the return. The other aforementioned fisheries basically get no hatchery fish.
The state’s latest “enhancement report” claims “168,000 hatchery fish were caught in sport, personal use, and subsistence fisheries” in 2022. Fish and Game reports a 2022 PU harvest of nearly that in the Kasilof River, which I didn’t even mention, and a PU dipnet harvest there last year of 171,717.
The Kasilof is one of very few, actual “enhancement” success stories in this state or any other. Once badly over-fished, it was boosted with hatchery fish. The state first stocked it with 400,000 sockeye fry in 1978 and had steadily increased that to more than 17 million by 1984, at which time it was decided that wasn’t cost-effective and the number was reduced to 6 million.
That continued until the Wilderness Society sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1998, contending industrial-scale salmon stocking isn’t permitted in a federally designated wilderness area and Tustumena Lake, in which these sockeye were rearing, was in such an area. The Society lost at the circuit court level, but eventually won at the appeals court level in 2003. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/wilderness-society-v-u-887589443
Stocking promptly came to an end. Returns to the Kasilof were supposed to crash after that. They still haven’t crashed, and that was more than 20 years ago. Now, the concern is more about “over escapement” into the Kasilof than about any lack of fish.
As far as I know, this is the most successful hatchery “enhancement” program ever conducted on the West Coast. Most of the hatcheries just exist for production, whether to support commercial fisheries or those hobbyists to which you refer or to provide jobs for hatchery employees.
In the process, the hatcheries often further complicate the problems of mixed stock fisheries because, as in some Southeast chum fisheries, wild fish mix with hatchery fish and fisheries managers haven’t figured out a way to separate them one from the other until they are all dead.
One could fix this. We could bring back fish traps which would allow for the harvest of all the fin-clipped hatchery fish and the safe release of the wild fish, but we don’t like traps in Alaska. We also don’t seem to like conservation all that much though we talk like we’re all for it.
We always seem to have some excuse to kill wild fish rather than try to preserve them, especially if they’re not “our” fish. But your backyard Chinook system, the Taku, ain’t doin’ that well either. In fact, the last time I checked the Taku, Chilkat, King Salmon, Stikine, Unuk, Chickamin rivers plus Andrew Creek had been designated “stocks of management concern” by a Board of Fish worried they’re going in the wrong direction production-wise.
P.S. I suspect you are already aware of this but the Columbia River system once saw returns of 10 to 16 million Chinook and steelhead. (https://www.nwcouncil.org/reports/columbia-river-history/salmonandsteelhead/) A harvest of 360,000 would amount to 3.6 percent of the lower number. That would be a very low exploitation rate. But that was then and what we have is now.
Alaska didn’t cause the Columbia’s decline. But our harvests of Columbia fish aren’t helping it rebuild. And Alaska’s takeover of the North Pacific pastures for salmon might be doing more damage than the comparatively small harvest of Chinook in Southeast Alaska.
Unfortunately, we seem even more reluctant to consider that issue than to consider further reductions in Southeast troll harvests.
For the record my comment read “It’s more about protecting salmon fisheries, many of which would fail to exist other than as a hobby or subsistence activity, if it weren’t for these hatcheries.” Note the words “other than.” Perhaps I should have reworded that sentence so that it couldn’t be misunderstood. What I intended to state was that many salmon fisheries both sport and commercial would be nonviable or fail to exist without hatchery supplements. Many fisheries would be reduced to hobby fisheries or subsistence activities. I can’t think of many commercial salmon fisheries south of the Copper River that would help someone earn a living without the existence of hatcheries. That being said, I don’t think a dramatic restructuring of the current hatchery system shouldn’t be considered. If this were to happen, I would support decisions driven by data.
Despite the bad rap of “hatchery fish” in the media they have definitely proven useful when used strategically. Your example of the Kasilof enhancement success story has much in common with several projects on the Columbia River. In Idaho they reintroduced hatchery stocks of coho from the lower Columbia into the Clearwater River where they were previously extirpated but now support natural origin spawners and sport and tribal fisheries. They have had similar success with some of these projects for upper Columbia Chinook, coho, and sockeye. Sockeye enhancement has been particularly successful in the upper Columbia in recent years. You don’t read much about these success stories in the media yet over 700,000 sockeye (enhanced) returned to the upper Columbia this year. Crickets…. it just doesn’t fit the current narrative that hatchery/enhancement projects are bad.
The Chinook in the Thompson may be getting smaller, but 0.3 has long been the dominant age class for Chinook from the Sacramento River into southern BC for quite some time and they haven’t shrunk so much that most of them would be below the size limits in Alaska or BC. Another interesting finding about Chinook size at age is that the younger fish (1 and 2 ocean) are actually getting larger throughout much of their range. This doesn’t fit well with the theory that too many pink salmon are the mechanism driving Chinook to smaller sizes. Ohlberger and others (2018) provided the data that I am referencing. They surmised that the most likely hypothesis for the reduction in size of 4 and 5 ocean fish was…..wait for it….the increasing Orca population in the NE Pacific. You don’t hear much about it in the media. Possibly because it doesn’t fit the narrative? They aren’t the only scientists ignored by the media on this topic and just because their work doesn’t make the news doesn’t make it any less valid or important. Others have found wild Chinook productivity is related to seal density more so than hatchery releases. Ohlberger followed up his work in 2019 and found that the most likely explanation for the change in size and age structure for Chinook was again selective predation of large fish by increasing numbers of killer whales. Just for context killer whales consume an estimated 2.5 million adult Chinook a year. More than all the fisheries combined.
I’m all for considering reductions in any fishery to help rebuild troubled stocks and I am also a firm believer in using real data to make these adjustments. Salmon are a creature that seem to stir up strong beliefs among people. It’s hard to bump into a sport or commercial fishermen that can’t help but tell you a thing or two about salmon stocks and exactly how they would fix them. The scientists and managers are only slightly better. All groups are readily influenced by things they read in the media. I think it’s important that people form their beliefs based on numbers that are as close to real as possible. What really sucks is that the numbers we want to use are confusing and hard to come by even if you can figure out where to look and what we might learn from them. Yes, Canadians are making adjustments to their fisheries. They have to. The stream rearing Chinook in the northern BC coast are doing horrible much like our fish in Alaska. However, they are still sport and commercial fishing on our stocks (Washington and Oregon) and their fisheries also have high exploitation rates on some stocks of concern. This includes First Nation catches, which unlike subsistence fisheries can be and are sold commercially in the larger fisheries.
If you would like to read any of these papers let me know and I’ll ship them to you. Many of them will be behind pay walls. I think you would enjoy them. Might even give you something to write about.
Thanks Ed, but I’ve probably read most of them. I’m well familiar with all of the predation theories, and generally accept them as a contributory problem given what we have learned about natural predation in general in the last couple of decades.
Back when I was at university, it was all dismissed as compensatory, and it’s now clear than natural predation, especially in human-altered ecosystemns, can in many cases be additive. If any government agency ever wanted to engage in true “ecosystem management” instead of just talking about it, we’d probably be looking at some removals of predators across the spectrum instead of just worrying about human removals of fish.
But then, if we were into ecosystem management, we’d also be looking at him humans additions because the data is now pretty clear that our hatchery fish are affecting the growth of sockeyes, and probably other longer lived salmon, in the odd-numbered years when we’re swarmed with pinks.
As for the 2.5M Chinook whales are said to eat, that is a WAG. But they no doubt eat a bunch. Their predation, however, doesn’t explain changes in size at age in Chinook, and I have seen no studies indicating larger sizes at younger ages for Chinook, although there is a lot of variability year to year and I could envision the possibility for some increase in size at age for a three-year-old Chinook bracketed either side of that extreme odd-year competition with pinks.
I also need to correct you on the claim that “many salmon fisheries both sport and commercial would be nonviable or fail to exist without hatchery supplements.” The proper word there would be “some,” and in the sport world “almost none,” at least in Alaska.
When it comes to the volume of sport harvest of Alaska wild salmon compared to hatchery fish, hatchery fish are a pittance. They are much bigger contributor in the commercial world, but there they benefit a handful of Outside based processors more than the small number of commercial fishermen they support, which raises another interesting point for discussion.
Your interest here is clearly more economic than biologic. I can understand that. That’s a perfectly understandable and viable view, especially in Southeast with its limited range of economic opportunities.
So why not go all the way and just start farming salmon? The farmers at least keep their fish in pens where they can’t interfere with wild fish, and they have a strong economic incenctive to see that the fish stay in the pens. There are without doubt some environmental issues, but they can be mitigated.
And I’m sure the state would have less trouble getting the farmers to clean up the seabed beneath their net pens than the state is facing in trying to get the “ranchers”’ to clean up the shitty mess beneath their net pens. Your friends at Douglas Island Pink and Chum (DIPAC) (and I admit to guessing that you have some but suspect it’s a better guess than the volume of Chinook consumed by killer whales) are to be commended for not joining the commercial-fishermen-controlled associations fighting the state over seabed clean up beneath the pens.
I noticed when DIPAC cleaned up its mess in the interest of gaining more “depth” beneath their pens in their non-farming farming business. Jesus reporters these days are gullible. But lets ignore that.
There is no doubt that modern, now industrial, agriculture can out produce nature. Drive across America and you can’t miss this reality at work.
And the evidence in Alaska is increasingly pointing toward the idea that if we’re going to farm salmon – and let’s make no mistake that we’re farming salmon no matter how we try to downplay that with the word “ranching” – raising the fish until we can eat them is better than raising them to the stage where they can out-compete wild salmon and then dumping them in the sea.
If we want to prove that Alaskans aren’t just “salmon farmers” trying to hide behind a different label, how about we enact a state law penning the pen feeding of “ranched” slamon.
Along these lines as well, since Juneau has long wrestled with what to do with that mountainside honeycombed with tunnels by the old AJ Mine, why not just turn those tunnels into a massive RAS system stuffed with salmon that would enable someone to start selling the kind of salmon consumers really want to buy?
As I read the state’s ban on salmon “farming,” RAS would actualy seem more legal than the net penning that’s now going on at Alaska’s “ranches.”
The chinook harvest you quote for 2023 appears to include all commercial fisheries in Southeast. The total troll allocation was somewhere around 149,100. This includes Alaska hatchery and wild stock fish. I’m not sure how many the trollers actually caught but it is probably pretty close to the allocation.