Pre-season projections from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game call for a run of 180 million salmon of all species. That compares with a 20-year average of 156 million salmon, putting the 2005 season in the top 10 historically, McDowell said.

All top-10 harvests for the last 100 years have occurred within the last decade, said McDowell, who is also the project manager for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute's Salmon Market Information Service.

"Part of what we are seeing is a rebound of sockeye stocks, which account for two-thirds of the total salmon value," McDowell said. The 2004 statewide harvest of 44 million sockeye, worth approximately $250 million, ranks as the eighth largest sockeye harvest on record, he said.

The sockeye harvest bottomed out in 2002, with a value of $162 million, then rose to a value of $209 million in 2003, he said. "Frankly, we had nowhere to go but up after the 2002 season," McDowell said.

Fluctuation of the Alaska salmon runs has a marginal effect on total world supply, he said. While Alaska's contribution is significant, the state is not a major supplier of salmon, producing 10 percent to 12 percent of the total world supply.

"Looking at it from the big picture, we are already at record harvest levels," McDowell said. "We're not necessarily going to catch more salmon. We can't realistically expect to catch more, but the world supply is continuing to grow. So wild Alaska salmon is becoming more rare, not because of scarcity, but because of the volume of farmed fish."

Marketing efforts by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute and others have helped to distinguish the state's product from farmed salmon, he said. "The domestic market and interest from Europe have improved substantially from even a year or two ago, as a result of differentiating wild salmon from farmed fish."

The industry is also seeing slow, but steady growth in salmon fillet production, the preferred domestic product, plus salmon burgers and salmon nuggets, he said. Processors are also freezing Alaska salmon here and reprocessing it overseas, primarily in China, he said.

In the canned salmon market, one of the state's two primary product forms, things are looking up as well. Canned pink salmon is still in oversupply, but there are signs of improvement, he said.

There has also been significant growth in U.S. markets for higher-value salmon. Prices paid to fishermen for this winter's king salmon averaged more than $7 a pound in the Southeast Alaska troll fishery, compared with $4.65 a pound for Copper River kings last year.

In all, processors sold 182 million pounds of headed and gutted frozen salmon in calendar year 2004, bringing in $223 million, he said. The aggregate price was about $1.22 a pound, compared with $1.01 a pound in 2002, and 99 cents a pound in 2003.

The biggest gain for 2004 was in fresh headed and gutted salmon of all species. "We sold $60 million in fresh headed and gutted fish in 2004, compared with values of $24 million in 2001, $20 million in 2002 and $33 million in 2003," he said. The average for the last three years was $26 million.

Processors sold 6.5 million pounds of frozen fillets of salmon for a total of $11.5 million in 2004, at an average price of $1.79 a pound. Fresh fillets, 897,000 pounds in all, were worth $1.8 million.

Salmon roe went for an average of $5.19 a pound in 2004, for a total of 18.7 million pounds that brought processors $96 million. That price was up from an average price of $4.47 a pound in 2003 on a harvest of 19.4 million pounds worth a total of $86.9 million, he said. Roe values peaked in 1999 and 2000. The price decline has now leveled off.

For pink and chum salmon, the overall strategy is to take this relatively low-value fish and convert it into an attractive product form, shooting for the demographic that values the quality of Alaska salmon and is willing to pay for it, McDowell said.

"For pinks, in particular, anything we can do with shifting product form from traditional canned pink to other products will reduce chronic oversupply in the canned market," he said.