Commercial fishermen converge on the area every year in late June, ready to cast out drift gillnets and set nets on a daily basis, in compliance with announcements issued by the state Department of Fish and Game.

Biologists determine the fishing periods with an eye toward allowing adequate escapement into streams, where salmon lay eggs that will develop into future harvests. When an abundance of fish return to an area, fishermen may harvest several hundred fish inside of an hour.

Through the weekend of July 11-12, fishermen in the Egegik district on the east side of Bristol Bay had netted 10.5 million sockeyes. For the Naknek-Kvichak district, the harvest stood at 7.6 million fish and in the Nushagak district on the west side of Bristol Bay, 7.1 million reds were netted.

Processor-imposed limits, due to the high harvest volume, were at an end, and still the reds kept coming, including 215,000 reds in the Naknek-Kvichak district, 200,000 in Egegik, 125,000 in Ugashik and 100,000 for the Nushagak on July 11 alone.

Still, Dillingham fisherman Robin Samuelsen, business executive and chairman of the board of Ocean Beauty Seafoods, said the domestic processors need to increase their processing capabilities.

"I'm sure there are ways they could increase it, by bringing in more floating equipment," said Samuelsen, who fishes with the drift gillnet fleet in the Nushagak district. "We used to have 30 (processing) companies. Now we are down to eight majors. The state needs to step in. This is a statewide problem."

Samuelsen, president and chief executive officer of Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp., which owns 50 percent of Ocean Beauty Seafoods, said limits on harvests imposed by the processors have resulted in $360 million in lost borough taxes and pay to fishermen.

Samuelsen said he wasn't surprised that fishermen were again put on harvest limits this year, when the numbers of fish netted exceeded processing capacity.

"The state needs to talk to foreign processors and local domestic processors to see if they can come in to help," he said.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game will continue to set fishing periods in Bristol Bay until July 27, when the fall fishing schedule goes into effect, allowing harvests from 9 a.m. Mondays through 9 a.m. Fridays each week.

For the westward region, including Kodiak, Chignik, and the south and north Alaska Peninsula, some 7.6 million salmon, including 3.6 million sockeye and 3 million pinks were harvested, plus some 9,000 kings and 914,000 chum.

The central region, including Prince William Sound, had a total harvest of 4 million salmon, including 2.2 million chum, 1.3 million reds, 489,000 pink and 9,000 kings.

For Southeast Alaska, the harvest totaled 2.7 million salmon, including 1.9 million chum, 428,000 pinks, 210,000 sockeye, 89,000 kings and 83,000 silvers. The Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim region had 304,000 salmon, including some 201,000 chum, 80,000 sockeye and 22,000 kings, mostly harvested in the Kuskokwim River and Kuskokwim Bay.

Retail prices on sockeye salmon varied, from $47.94 for a fresh whole sockeye, and $13.99 a pound for sockeye fillets at the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle to an extended July 4 holiday sale price of $7.99 a pound for whole sockeyes or fillets at Carrs-Safeway and $8.99 for fillets and $5.99 a pound for whole fish at Fred Meyer stores in the Anchorage area.

Margaret Bauman can be reached at

margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com.