Haines Borough’s biggest fish processing plant will stay closed next summer for the third straight season, OBI Seafoods’ Excursion Inlet plant manager Tom Marshall said this week, citing a low pink salmon forecast and the company’s ability to cover regional demand at its Petersburg plant.

“There’s no change in what we’ve been doing (the past two years). The plan is to operate next year like we did — basically having a small crew to support the local operation there and support fishermen and tenders,” Marshall said.

The continued suspension of processing at Excursion means the borough will see another year of low raw fish tax revenue. Haines averaged about $200,000 in taxes on fish landed locally in fiscal years 2017 through 2021, compared to an expected $60,500 in fiscal year 2023, which accounts for the 2021 fishing season, the first the plant didn’t process. (A poor harvest and low ex-vessel prices caused revenue to dip to $37,240 in fiscal year 2022, which accounts for the 2020 fishing season, the last that OBI processed at Excursion.)

Borough officials budgeted for $60,500 in raw fish tax revenue this fiscal year, which accounts for the 2021 fishing season, when the borough’s only active processor, Haines Packing Co at Letnikof Cove., experienced a boost in landings.

Although OBI Seafoods won’t be processing at Excursion, the company still plans to send tenders to the Lynn Canal, as it has the past two seasons, and to provide basic services at the cannery — ice, net storage and fuel.

Marshall also said the frequency of mail deliveries for local residents would stay the same as it’s been: three times a week in summer and once a week in winter. But OBI won’t be restocking the plant’s seasonal store, which has been closed along with processing operations since 2020.

The company employed four people at the plant last season and intends to have a similar workforce next summer, Marshall said. OBI’s tenders are shuttling fish to the company’s bigger operation in Petersburg, which processes fish from February to November, Marshall said.

Marshall said the company is still making decisions about Excursion on a year-to-year basis. He declined to comment on the company’s long-term plan for the cannery or on whether there is a timeline for when a permanent decision might be made about its future.

As for the upcoming season, he said “the general level of all the fisheries combined is just not enough to warrant us opening there.” He added that OBI has “enough production capacity in Petersburg” to cover the region next year.

The Southeast Alaska pink salmon harvest forecast released earlier this month also played a role in the decision, Marshall said.

Next year’s harvest is projected to be weak, according to federal and state researchers who base projections on sea temperature models and trawl surveys in Chatham and Icy straits.

The forecasted harvest is 19 million fish — about 39% of the past 10 odd years. The last odd-year harvest was over 48 million fish. The pink run has a two-year cycle with odd-year harvests usually well above even years.

Marshall called the weak forecast “really surprising” considering how much lower it is than the 2021 catch. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists said their trawl survey results — which showed a low abundance of juvenile pinks last summer — were “unexpected given generally robust escapements in most of the region in 2021,” according to the Nov. 8 forecast announcement.

The scientists theorized that a long cold spell in early 2022 might have “negatively impacted developing embryos, but we do not know for certain what caused the low juvenile abundance.” Lynn Canal pink runs have declined since they peaked about a decade ago. In western Alaska, pink production has increased in recent years, a trend some scientists believe is associated with climate change and warming seas.

But climate effects on the local runs are not fully clear. “I would say we don’t really know what is going to happen for SEAK pink salmon over the long-term and for the short term it really depends on year-to-year environmental conditions in SEAK and in the Gulf of Alaska,” ADFG fishery biologist Andrew Piston said in an email to the CVN. He said the reasons for the decline aren’t well understood.

OBI also processed chum and sockeye salmon at Excursion Inlet. Two years ago, the chum harvest was low and the plant processed only about two million pounds of fish that year, Marshall told the CVN in June.

Historically, a poor season might’ve seen about 12 million to 15 million pounds come through the plant, Marshall said. A good year might’ve seen up to 30 million pounds.

*The print version of this article misstated that OBI Seafoods stopped processing at its Excursion Inlet plant in 2020 and incorrectly implied that was the cause of low borough fish tax revenue from that year. In fact, the plant was still open in 2020 but processed less fish there than usual. A poor harvest and low fish prices caused the significant drop in revenue from that season.