Chilkat River king salmon escapement is the lowest on record despite this summer’s unprecedented subsistence, sport and commercial fishing restrictions in Upper Lynn Canal and Haines area.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimated a return of 1,231 king salmon, well below 1,750 minimum needed to sustain the run, said Brian Elliott, a king stock assessment biologist with the agency.

Lynn Canal was managed for the non-retention of all kings. Subsistence fishing was delayed until the end of July, more than a month later than normal. Commercial gillnet openings were limited by area and time. The spring troll fishery was also restricted.

Despite those regulations, the Chilkat king harvest accounted for 10 percent of the run this year, more than last year’s 7 percent harvest, Elliott said.

Commercial troll and sport fisheries accounted for 131 of the 140 harvested king salmon. Gillnetters landed the remaining nine, according to Fish and Game data.

“We put regulations into effect to get as many fish in the spawning grounds as possible,” Elliott said. “It didn’t help us make our goal, but it also cut down on potential harvest, too. When we’re in a conservation mode like we are, every fish counts.”

Fish and Game obtain data on king returns by capturing salmon in nets and fish wheels and between 7 and 9 Mile in the Chilkat River. Researchers then attach a tag behind the king’s dorsal fin.

“We put out 66 tags (this year), which is low,” Elliott said. “All of this is low, low, low.”

Biologists then headed up to spawning grounds in August to look for those tagged fish.

They found tags on 11 out of the 232 fish they inspected. Biologists divide the number of tagged kings by the ratio of tagged fish found on spawning grounds to come up with their abundance estimate.

Elliott said warm temperatures drove glacial runoff into spawning streams and high rains in late August made the search more difficult.

Eighty percent of this summer’s king run were large, five-year-old fish. Elliot said that’s a recurring trend where the six-year-old component of the population is gradually disappearing.

“One problem we’ve been having in the last eight to ten years is these fish are coming back earlier and younger,” Elliott said. “There are a lot of four- year-olds in the population. A lot of fives and the sixes are kind of falling off.”

The Chilkat River system isn’t alone in its dismal king salmon escapement numbers. Of 11 rivers Fish and Game monitors in Southeast, only two made escapement goals this summer.

Across the Panhandle, king salmon declines started in 2012.

The Stikine saw fewer than 10,000 kings return, short of a minimum escapement goal of 14,000 this year. The Taku saw about 7,000 fish return, well below a minimum escapement goal of 19,000.

“We’re talking about region-wide failures in meeting our goals and meeting our sustainable levels of spawning production,” Elliot said. “This is what’s really scary.”

Ten of the 11 rivers have missed escapement goals during the past several years, but the Chilkat hasn’t made escapement in five of the past six years. King escapement up the Chilkat River first crashed in 2007.

“That was the first big alarm bell year,” Elliot said. “There was a crash all over Southeast, too. It wasn’t just Chilkats. Since then we’ve had a few decent years but overall our average is about half of what it was.”

Escapement failed on the Alsek and Unuk rivers and all systems except the Keta River have also crashed several times since 2007.

Fish and Game estimates an average of 175,000 smolt leave the Chilkat River drainage and enter the ocean every year. Historically, survival rates were between 3 and 5 percent. For recent age classes, that rate has fallen to below 2 percent.

Elliott said ocean conditions are likely to blame for the low returns. Ocean surface temperatures rose an average of five to six degrees since 2012, which likely affects king predation and rearing conditions, Elliott said. The Blob, the name for an expanse of warm water from Mexico to Alaska first detected in 2013, has contributed to those rising temperatures.

The warmer waters likely shuffle prey species and could also affect king migration, Elliott said.

“It’d be nice to give nifty, clean answers, but without more information – especially about the ocean environment-we don’t have that clear resolution,” Elliott said.

Former Haines Fish and Game Area Management Biologist Randy Ericksen helped start the mark and recapture studies. He now works as a fisheries sustainability advisor in Russia. He has also worked as an advisor in Japan and the Pacific Northwest.

“We’re talking about chinook returns around the Pacific Rim in general,” Ericksen said. “They’re down everywhere. In Russia they closed most of the commercial fisheries for chinook salmon.”

Ericksen said the local Fish and Game biologists are doing the right thing in curtailing fisheries. He said ensuring adult chinooks return upriver should be the primary objective.

“The restrictions they implemented this year are pretty extreme but certainly warranted with the information they have,” Ericksen said.

Ericksen cited king declines attributed to poor ocean conditions during the 1940s through the 1970s based on commercial fishing catch data. He said populations increased during the 1980s as marine conditions improved and said ocean conditions are cyclical, along with fish abundance.

While that might suggest a cyclical pattern to king salmon abundance, there are also other factors that might be playing a part, including ocean warming, Ericksen said.

Elliott said next year’s subsistence, sport and commercial fisheries will likely see the same restrictions as this year.

Klukwan’s Marvin Willard, 78, said between restrictions, high water and changing river conditions, subsistence fishing in Klukwan has been poor.

“The river’s changing,” Willard said. “We used to have a lot of back eddies at Klukwan village. High water is taking away the banks. Our whole system is changing here. It’ll go back again but we have to live with it.”

Willard thinks the changes are natural, but also caused in part by the Alaska Department of Transportation depositing runoff silt at 23 Mile into the Chilkat River.

He also said people should be able to gaff kings because they don’t need to catch very many for food.

“King salmon is like hooligan. You eat hooligan once a year and that’s good enough,” Willard said. “Back when I can remember as a kid they were going up Big Boulder and Little Boulder Creeks we used to gaff them. Gaffing was the way to go to get the king salmon.”

Willard said he’s also concerned about the low sockeye returns. “I put my net out for seven hours and all I got was dirt.”