Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Alaska Harvest of Humpies Tops 209 Million Fish

Alaska’s harvest of humpies may have peaked, but the pinks are still coming in, with a catch now numbered at more than 209 million fish out of a total statewide catch of 260 million salmon. The preliminary harvest report also included 29,310,000 sockeye, 17,595,000 chum, 3,543,000 silver and 304,000 king salmon.

That was the latest preliminary report Aug 27 from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, right in line with last week’s observation by Geron Bruce, assistant director of the state Division of Commercial Fisheries, who mused “we are past the peak, but I think it will have some pretty good tail on it.” And what a tail it is, up from the 185 million pinks caught by this time a week ago.

In Prince William Sound alone, harvesters have now delivered to processors a total of 115,200,000 salmon, including 89,423,000 pinks, while in Southeast Alaska, processors have received more than 85 million humpies from their fishermen.

In the state’s westward region, including the Alaska Peninsula, Aleutian Islands, Chignik and Kodiak, the preliminary harvest figures show a total of 34.7 million humpies delivered to processors out of a total harvest of 44.9 salmon overall.

Kodiak alone has 26 million pink, plus 2.4 million red, 778,000 chum, 135,00 coho and 34,000 king salmon. On the Yukon River, meanwhile, the harvest of those very oil rich chum salmon reached 730,000 fish, with the bulk of them – 578,000 fish – from the Lower Yukon.

Check out the state’s commercial salmon preliminary harvest reports daily at http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=commercialbyfisherysalmon.bluesheet.