Commercial fishermen who’ve seen the value of their catch drop with changes in prices from processors are taking a double hit this year because most species they catch are smaller in size than in past years.
Brad Badger, a gillnetter for 20 years, said he’s been using a gillnet intended to catch pink salmon for catching sockeye, a larger fish. “It seemed to do well for both fish. I bought it a couple years ago when (pink) prices were higher. I’ve had it on for five weeks now and I haven’t been targeting humpies.”
Badger said August was perhaps his best month ever in terms of numbers of sockeye caught, but it may not be his best ever in poundage. According to preliminary numbers from fish processors, Lynn Canal sockeye have been averaging 5.9 pounds, compared to a normal weight of 6.5 pounds.
Subsistence fisherman Don Turner said he noticed the difference this year as well. Using a sockeye net, “quite a few got through” the mesh and others passed through web clear to their dorsal fins before becoming caught, he said.
Chum salmon, which make up the biggest part of the local catch and the lion’s share of fishing income, also are smaller this year, averaging about one pound less than the 8.2-pound average for hatchery-raised chum in Lynn Canal.
Curiously, pink salmon, the smallest of the commercial species here and the least valuable, are larger this year. They’re coming back at about 4.25 pounds, compared to 3.75 pounds for a recent historic average.
Mark Sogge, assistant management biologist for the Department of Fish and Game in Haines, said fishermen are calling the little sockeye “bullet fish.” “They’re bullet-shaped like a steelhead. They don’t flare much at the belly. They’re tubular, weird-looking things.”
Sogge said the sockeye size difference is possibly attributed to a larger number of younger fish returning to spawn. Sockeye typically spend three years in the ocean growing to maturity but this year many spawners have spent only two years.
“For the Chilkoot run, what we’re getting is higher numbers of young fish. We’re seeing twice as many of those, percentage-wise, than we usually get,” Sogge said this week.
Fully mature fish seem are only slightly smaller in length than ones from recent years, according to Fish and Game records. The agency doesn’t keep records of fish weights, which might help shed more light on what’s happening. “What determines if they stick in a net is girth,” Sogge said.
The biological significance of the small fish is difficult to say, Sogge said. The return or smaller or younger fish may be an indicator of reduced food or increased stress in the ocean environment.
But above-average returns of Chilkoot sockeye that have spent less than four years in the ocean also has been a harbinger of a pending boom year, Sogge said. “That correlation isn’t rock-solid, but it’s an indicator.”
Fish and Game is on target to meet its goals for returning spawning sockeyes into Chilkoot and Chilkat lakes, but that target is based on spawners being of a certain size and fecundity, Sogge noted.
The drop in the size of hatchery chum salmon doesn’t help fishermen, but may not be a long-term concern, said Eric Prestegard, executive director of Douglas Island Pink and Chum, a Juneau-based hatchery that produces most of the chum caught in lower Lynn Canal.
“For a person who bases their finances on numbers of fish they put on their boat, it’s a tougher year because the fish are smaller, but they’re not so much smaller that you want to point a figure at someone,” Prestegard said this week. He pointed out that last year’s chum averaged 8.5 pounds, up from the historical average of 8.2 pounds.
This year’s chum size drop “is in the normal range of variation” for the fish, he said. A strong El Nino event may have had some effect on the fish, he said. “You can’t have warm water and not have some effect, but salmon are resilient.”
For the past six years, the hatchery chum have come back bigger in even years and smaller in odd years, but even that’s not enough data to start identifying trends in salmon populations, he said.
“For salmon, you need a 20-year study. I’ve read too many studies on the falling size of salmon just to have them come back the following year as monsters,” Prestegard said.
Prestegard said he had no explanation for the relatively larger size of pink salmon this year. “That’s the beauty and the mystery of the big, black box we call the ocean,” he said.