Preliminary King salmon returns in the Chilkat River drainage are estimated at less than 1000 fish, slightly less than the Alaska Department of Fish and Game 1,030 return forecast made last winter-a trend that tracks with other rivers in northern Southeast, which had the worst runs or on par with the worst runs on record.

“It’s probably going to be around 900 large spawners, which is the lowest ever since we started this in 1991,” Fish and Game biologist Brian Elliott said. “[It’s] not too surprising, however, and hopefully this is the low point. We just don’t know. We keep thinking we found the low point and then we find something lower.”

The Alaska Board of Fisheries earlier this year labeled Chilkat kings, along with kings in the King Salmon and Unuk rivers as “stocks of concern,” because runs have continuously failed to meet escapement goals. That designation came with a host of increased commercial, sport and subsistence fishing restrictions across Southeast.

Elliott said commercial and sport king harvests this year will be about 10 percent of the total returns, a similar harvest rate compared to the past two years.

Elliott conducts mark and recapture surveys every summer to estimate king returns. Elliott and his staff tagged 110 kings this year. When they ventured to the spawning grounds to collect the tags, however, they only recovered four. Bears had consumed entire carcasses because the abundance of spawning fish was so low. When there are more spawning fish, bears typically don’t eat the entire carcasses, but rather the fish organs, Elliott said.

“That really hurt our sampling,” Elliott said. “Abundance is so low and they’re on top of these fish and they don’t leave much for us.”

This was the first time Elliott didn’t use the recovered tags to estimate returns. Instead they counted spawners in their two main sampling areas, the Kelsall and Tahini rivers. They estimated this year’s returns based on the number of days they sampled along with the number of carcasses they saw.

Many people have different theories as to the cause of king salmon decline, the most common being “marine ocean survival,” a phrase Elliott said he dislikes. “Everybody talks about it,” Elliott said. “It’s abused and overused in every arena because it’s the buzzword.”

Elliott said he cautions against using blanket terms for a complex problem. “We can estimate smolt leaving the Chilkat, Taku, Stikine, and Unuk rivers,” Elliott said. “We can estimate the adult returns. What we don’t have information about is the marine rearing environment. What is the marine problem? Is there early mortality in the estuary? Is there a lack of prey species or too much competition for prey? Is late mortality occurring from marine mammals? We simply need more information from the ocean.”

Alaska Gulf waters warmed significantly between 2013 and 2015-which could shift the trophic environment-possibly changing rearing areas and introducing kings to different predator species, Elliott said. This year’s kings, most of which were born in 2013, entered that warm water in 2015.

The local Alaska Department of Fish and Game Advisory Committee recently wrote to Fish and Game’s habitat division head Jackie Timothy with concerns about highway construction permits allowing rip rap placement at high water. Timothy cited “marine ocean survival” as the issue facing kings and responded with another common idea-that fresh water isn’t the problem.

Elliott said while that might be the case, fresh water habitat needs to be protected and that there is little margin for error. “It’s kind of like when you’re down by three touchdowns in the fourth quarter,” Elliott said. “There’s no margin for error. Well we’re there.”

An average of 185,000 king smolt have left the Chilkat River drainage for the ocean between 1999 and 2011. If 1 percent of those smolt survive the marine environment, 1,850 kings should be returning on average, which would pass the lower escapement goal. At 2 percent that number jumps to 3,700, which surpasses the upper bound of the escapement goal. Still, those numbers reflect total king survival including four-year-old fish. Only five-and six-year-old fish count toward the escapement goal.

“That one percent change in survival really manifests itself in a lot more adults coming back which would be a nice increase to see,” Elliott said. “Generally [it’s a] downward linear trend.”

Six-year-old kings are also declining at an alarming rate, and represent about 10 percent of returning fish. Larger and older kings produce more eggs and can dig their redds in river bottom material that smaller fish aren’t strong enough to. And with fewer older fish, the five-year-age class represents the bulk of the run.

“Now we’re just all eggs in one basket,” Elliott said. “If that age class does poorly then our overall [return] is going to be poor because we don’t have their brothers and sisters in the same waterways anymore like they used to.”

Fish and game monitors 11 Southeast rivers for king escapement. Kings in the Stikine and Taku rivers, the two largest river systems in the region, also failed to meet escapement goals, according to preliminary estimates. The Taku has a lower escapement goal of 19,000 kings and biologist estimated less than 8,000 fish returned. Both rivers have missed their goals for the past three years.

Philip Richards, Fish and Game supervisor of chinook stock assessments, said labeling other Southeast populations as stocks of concern will have to wait until the next board of fish cycle, a date which is more than two years away. The board can take up the issue out of board cycle if there is a large enough concern, Richards said. He said across Southeast, the runs came in as expected and biologists anticipate future poor returns.

“We expect the forecasts to be relatively poor,” Richards said. “We have some hope. The southern stocks are turning around. I expect we’ll see poor returns in northern southeast again next year.”

The Blossom, Keta, Unuk and Alsek rivers all exceeded their escapement goals in 2018.

Commercial fisherman J.R. Churchill, 60, sold his Southeast gillnet permit last year and bought a Bristol Bay permit. He said the decrease in kings was part of the reason he sold his Southeast permit, and that he doesn’t think they’ll rebound anytime soon.

“With the restrictions that we got this year and the previous year, I saw the writing on the wall,” Churchill said. “These kings are not going to bounce back in a short cycle. The time and area restrictions we had the year before and now this year are going to do nothing but stay in place or be more draconian as time goes on because they want to get every single king up the river.”

Gillnetter Norman Hughes said the increased fishing restrictions cost him $20,000. “I was way behind on my poundage this year,” Hughes said. “It took damn near the whole season to break 100,000 pounds. Usually you hit that somewhere in July.”

He said he’s concerned state budget cuts will reduce Fish and Game’s ability to understand king decline and that the commercial fleet will eventually see further restrictions as returns dwindle.

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