29M Pink Salmon Harvest Forecast for SE Alaska

State fisheries biologists have good news for pink salmon harvesters in Southeast Alaska: a 2025 harvest forecast of 29 million humpies, with an ex-vessel value of $14.5 million.

The prediction, which comes in the wake of a 2024 fishery disaster, is considered an average run. The forecast was released Nov. 19, and is based on juvenile pink salmon abundance indices collected in northern Southeast Alaska inside waters.

State biologists said the current forecast is slightly above the recent 10-year average harvest of 26 million for humpies, and about 60% of the parent year of 2023 harvest of 48 million fish.

Last year’s harvest of 19.9 million pink salmon, with an average weight of 2.9 pounds, was lower than anticipated and by August, fishermen had netted only 35% of the forecast.

The fish were much smaller than forecast, and managers had to close fishing for longer periods than usual. Some fishermen quit the season early because of the harvest disaster, leaving many participants in with no income and considerable debt.

State Rep. Sarah Vance, R- Homer, has called on the Alaska government to declare a federal fishery disaster declaration not only for Southeast Alaska, but also for Kodiak, Lower Cook Inlet, Upper Cook Inlet, the Southeast Alaska Peninsula and Chignik.

This time around, parent year escapement indices exceeded the biological escapement goal ranges in the Southern Southeast and Northern Southeast Inside Subregions and were near the upper borders of the escapement goal range in the Northern Southeast Outside Subregion.

Juvenile pink salmon in the 2024 Southeast Alaska Coastal Monitoring (SACM) project survey trawls were also smaller than average in length, but had higher than average energy density, compared with trawl surveys from 1997 through 2024, biologists said.

The report notes that poor forecast accuracy in two recent odd years, 2021 and 2023, led to a review of odd/even year treatment in the forecast model and potential issues with vessel-calibration coefficients.  A coefficient refers to the numerical factor that is multiplied by a variable in an algebraic expression, an example being:  “5x + 2y,” “5” is the coefficient of “x” and “2” is the coefficient of “y.”

Historically separate odd and even year models were avoided to limited years in the dataset and similar trends observed in both broodlines until 2006. Including an odd/even year factor now aligns better with the 1-ocean-year life history of pink salmon, accounting for recent odd/even year harvest and escapement differences, biologists said.

The model also addressed errors potentially introduced by observed vessel-calibration coefficients by replacing them with model-estimated coefficients, based on 25 years of vessel-specific raw catch per unit of effort data, which better accounts for variations in vessel efficiency over the SECM survey’s long history.

Biologists said that while uncertainties are inherent in salmon forecasts that this NOAA/ADF&G joint pink salmon harvests forecast as maintained a strong track record despite the unique forecasting challenges for pink salmon.

Preliminary 2024 harvest estimates and ex-vessel values fishermen put the estimated number of fish harvested at nearly 20 million fish, with an ex-vessel value of $14.5 million.

Source: https://fishermensnews.com/29m-pink-salmon-harvest-forecast-for-se-alaska/