What a
difference a week makes! The latest preliminary Alaska commercial salmon
harvest totals from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game show the catch has
jumped from 58 million to closing in on 75 million fish.
As of July
23, commercial harvesters had delivered to processors some 74,766,000 fish,
including 34,558,000 pink, 27,109,000 sockeye, 12,085 chum, 729,000 silver and
284,000 king salmon.
While the
Bristol Bay fishery was essentially over, after a run of some 23 million fish,
with a cumulative harvest of 15.5 million sockeye, the total for Prince William
Sound closed to over 28 million fish harvested, including 22,636,000 pink,
3,326,000 chum, nearly 2.2 million red, 14,000 silver and 10,000 king salmon.
In the
Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim region, the Lower Yukon harvest of chum salmon reached
404,000 fish, the Upper Yukon delivered 82,000 chum, Norton Sound had 58,000
chum, and Kuskokwim Bay and Kuskokwim River had a total of 105,000 chum, plus
4,000 coho and 2,000 king salmon.
In Cook
Inlet, the catch has reached 2.6 million fish, including 2,355,000 red, 87,000
chum, 62,000 silver, 59,000 pink and 5,000 king salmon, mainly from the central
district of Upper Cook Inlet.
In Southeast
Alaska, the harvest stands at over 16 million fish, including 8.8 million pink,
6.1 million chum, 490,000 silver, 411,000 red and 214,000 kings.
Off the
Alaska Peninsula, harvesters have delivered 4.3 million fish, mainly from the
South Peninsula, including 2.5 million red, 1,043,000 pink, 620,000 chum,
118,000 silver and 4,000 kings.
Kodiak area
harvesters have caught over 4 million salmon, including 1.8 million red, 1.8
million pink, 429,000 chum, 29,000 king and 19,000 silver salmon, and at
Chignik, the harvest has reached 2.5 million fish, with a catch of 2.2 million
red, 201,000 pink, 118,000 chum, 17,000 silver and 3,000 kings.