By Margaret Bauman
Alaska Journal of Commerce

Retail prices are slipping as the harvest grows, and consumers in late July were finding wild Alaska sockeye fillets at retail markets for $7.95 a pound, while king fillets commanded $9.95 a pound.

Whole sockeyes from all areas of Alaska were selling for $4.95 a pound, and whole kings were $6.95 in Anchorage area markets.

Hundreds of fishermen, from Southeast Alaska, Prince William Sound, Bristol Bay and Cook Inlet continued to bring in the harvest. By July 20, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game calculated a total harvest of nearly 68.3 million wild Alaska salmon of all species. The total included 361,000 chinooks, 38 million reds, 390,000 silvers, 22 million pinks and more than 7 million chums.

The bulk of the harvest was coming still from Bristol Bay. The Naknek-Kvichak district led the five Bristol Bay districts in sockeye catches, with 8.5 million reds, followed by the Nushagak, with 7.8 million reds, Egigik, 6.4 million, Ugashik, 4.6 million, and Togiak, with 395,000 reds. The Nushagak fleet also harvested more than 1 million chums.

For the Nushagak, the sockeye fishery is virtually over, and state officials have switched to a coho salmon management effort. The Nushagak sockeye harvest, the second largest since 1883, was expected to end just shy of 8 million reds. All systems of the Naknek-Kvichak were above harvest forecasts.

In Prince William Sound, Copper River fishermen reached a harvest of 38,000 kings and 1.6 million reds. All areas of Prince William Sound combined showed a total harvest of 39,000 kings, 2.6 million reds, 19 million pinks and 2.9 million chums. This is the third largest sockeye salmon harvest to date since 1969 in the Copper River District. The current cumulative harvest is surpassed by the 1997 harvest of nearly 2.9 million and the 1996 harvest of nearly 2.2 million for this date.

Cook Inlet also was bringing in a healthy harvest, let by the central district with about 6,000 kings and 1.3 million reds. State biologists said the harvest was moving along at a normal pace in Upper Cook Inlet. The drift gillnet fleet in Upper Cook Inlet had a harvest of 1,200 reds per boat on July 16, which appears to be the second best catch per unit of effort by drifters ever for the upper inlet, state officials said. Overall wild sockeye returns to Lower Cook Inlet were considered good to excellent, while hatchery returns were deemed very poor, according to state reports.

Overall, natural sockeye returns to LCI in 2007 are considered good to excellent, while enhanced sockeye returns are deemed very poor.

The Westward region, including Kodiak, Chignik, the South Alaska Peninsula, and the North Alaska Peninsula, reached a total harvest of 19,000 kings, 5.4 million reds, 84,000 silvers, 1.5 million pinks and 782,000 chums.

Kodiak management area sockeye harvests have been lower than recent years. As of July 18, the overall Kodiak management area early-run sockeye salmon harvest stood at 831,722 fish. The total harvest for early-run sockeye salmon for westside Kodiak, 553,266 reds, was above the 2007 forecast of 481,200 fish. Over the past several years, Karluk production has been consistently better than forecast, and for the past 10 years the early-run escapement goal has been achieved or exceeded. It is still too early to gauge the strength of late-run sockeye salmon, state biologists said.

The annual return of wild salmon to Alaskan streams is the basis for one of the state's most important industries, and is also critical to the traditional subsistence lifestyle of many areas of rural Alaska. Fishery management plans give top priority to the subsistence use of the fisheries.

From 2000-2004, the average harvest of salmon sold by commercial fishermen in Alaska was almost 157 million fish, or about 742 million pounds, according to state fisheries officials.

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com.