The Chilkoot River sockeye run will miss the state escapement goal this year for the first time in almost a decade. With this drop in the river’s sockeye return, local commercial fishermen say they are concerned about the long-term outlook — for the fish, and for the fishery.
As of this week, the state Fish and Game’s sockeye count at the Chilkoot Weir had plateaued at roughly 31,000 fish, some 6,000 fish below the escapement goal — what the state agency considers to be a sustainable returning population. And at this point in the season, they don’t expect many more fish to bolster those numbers.
“The recent daily counts have been under 100 fish, and we’re basically at roughly 90% of the run based on historical run timing,” Alaska Department of Fish and Game Haines area management biologist Nicole Zeiser said late last week. “It’s very evident that the escapement goal will be missed this year.”
Escapement describes how many fish reach the river to reproduce. It’s a population count, but only at one specific location, at the very end of the run’s migratory journey. That means even a run which starts with a high population can end up with low escapement if fish are caught in large numbers along the way to their spawning river. In other words, a healthy run, if overfished, can register low escapement.
But many in the Upper Lynn Canal’s gillnet fleet say that doesn’t account for low escapement this year — at least, they aren’t the ones doing the catching. By Fish and Game statistics, the local fleet’s sockeye catch this year is less than 40% of its five-year average.
“It’s worse than I’ve seen in a long time, and I’ve been out here 56 years,” said gillnetter Bill Thomas, of this year’s sockeye catch.
Gillnetter Cindy Price-Hagwood said that lack of sockeye abundance has made much of the season unprofitable.
“We’re in town because we can’t afford to go out,” Price-Hagwood said. “It doesn’t make sense to go out if you can’t justify the wear and tear on us, on our boats, and paying for the fuel.”
With few fish in the river and few being caught, the question remains of where all the Chilkoot sockeye have gone. Local gillnetters think they have a clear answer: the Juneau-area purse seine fleet is catching the fish near the mouth of the Lynn Canal.
Fish and Game data lends some credence to that theory, with seiners in the upper half of the panhandle catching more than four-times as many sockeye this year as they’ve averaged across the last five years.
Granted, an above-average sockeye catch this year for northern seiners is to be expected. The fleet targets pink salmon, which have been abundant every other year, on odd years like this one. When the region is flush with pink salmon, the fleet is less restricted, resulting in more total fish caught.
But the degree to which the fleet’s sockeye catch this year has overshot averages is notable — the highest in at least the last decade. The next highest year, 2017, saw a sockeye harvest less than 60% of this year’s take.
Zeiser, who manages Lynn Canal commercial fisheries, said the idea that seiners are intercepting the mass of Chilkoot sockeye is plausible.
“When there’s a high abundance of pink salmon, (Fish and Game) opens up that purse seine fishery to harvest those fish. And unfortunately, our sockeye are in that same migratory corridor,” Zeiser said. “There’s interception. We just don’t know how much.”
That’s because Fish and Game doesn’t do genetic testing on the seine fleet’s catch, which, if implemented, would indicate which runs were being caught. For instance, genetic testing in the Lynn Canal tells Zeiser what proportion of the catch are Chilkat fish and what proportion are Chilkoot fish. That information doesn’t exist for the seine fleet south of the canal.
Fish and Game Juneau area management biologist Scott Forbes, who manages the potential intercept point along the Hawk Inlet shoreline, acknowledged the stakes at play in his management area. “It’s been an area that has been scrutinized over the years,” Forbes said. “It’s a mixed stock fishery. There’s no doubt the seine fleet will pick up Chilkoot sockeye.”
But Forbes is unconvinced the seine fleet is the reason for the low Chilkoot sockeye escapement, pointing to strong sockeye returns elsewhere in Southeast, including the Chilkat run, that also pass through the Hawk Inlet shoreline — though potentially at different times.
Still, Forbes acknowledged the difficult position of gillnetters, who he said bear the brunt of regulation any time a stock is struggling.
“Gillnetters are the last gear group that you can really constrict because they’re fishing at the mouth of the river,” Forbes said.
Zeiser did introduce in-season restrictions this year on local gillnetters once it became apparent the Chilkoot run was struggling. For four weeks, the eastern half of the Lynn Canal — the general migratory corridor for the Chilkoot run, Zeiser said — was closed to the fleet. The four weeks of closure doubled last year’s in-season restrictions.
But last year, after the eastern corridor shut down for two weeks, low Chilkoot sockeye counts climbed and met escapement goals. This year, the closures didn’t have the same impact.
Fishermen fear that could be a sign of things to come. “Time and area don’t matter if there are no fish,” Bill Thomas said. “There’s no fish coming back no matter what kind of opening you give people.”