As the sockeye salmon harvest season comes to a close, only Bristol Bay, Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet surpassed their pre-season predictions, with harvests of 31.1 million, 3.1 million and 2 million reds respectively.
Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound were also the only two regions to show year-over-year growth and exceeding harvest projections, says Simon Marks, a research analyst for McKinley Research Group in Juneau, who writes the weekly in-season commercial wild Alaska salmon report on behalf of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.
While Bristol Bay has already surpassed the pre-season sockeye prediction by 19%, year-to-date harvest remains 23% behind 2023, Marks said on Aug. 27. Initial predictions for the 2025 season indicate an expected harvest of 32.4 million fish, a 2.8% gain if realized.
Growth in the overall commercial harvest in Prince William Sound stayed at a flat 13.6 million salmon, including 8.7 million pink, 3.1 million sockeye, 1.5 million chum, 32,000 coho and 6,000 kings, which the statewide commercial salmon harvest rose to 92.3 million fish — including nearly 41 million red, 35.4 million pink, nearly 15 million chum, 787,000 coho and 218,000 kings.
Cook Inlet fishermen had, through Tuesday, delivered a total of 2.1 million salmon, nearly all of it sockeyes — but also 68,000 chum, 49,000 pink and 14,000 coho to processors. Bristol Bay led the Central region, delivering more than 31.5 million fish, just about all of them sockeyes.
Fishermen were also still busy in the Westward region, where the preliminary harvest reached 14.7 million fish. Kodiak led with 8.7 million salmon, including nearly 7 million pink, 1.2 million sockeye, 483,000 chum, 43,000 coho and 1,000 Chinook. In the Alaska Peninsula the harvest climbed a bit from 4.5 million to 4.8 million salmon, with 2.5 million sockeye, 1.6 million pink, 596,000 chum, 83,000 coho and 8,000 kings. Chignik also saw increased harvest, coming to 1.3 million fish, including 903,000 pink, 274,000 red, 65,000 chum, 64,000 coho and 3,000 kings.
Harvests edged up a bit in Southeast Alaska, where the catch rose by some 2 million fish to 30.6 million salmon, including 17.2 million pink, nearly 12 million chum, 699,000 sockeye, 523,000 coho and 198,000 Chinook.
While this week’s salmon harvest was led primarily by Kodiak pink salmon, reduced pink salmon harvests statewide have drawn comparisons to the 2016 season in which a fisheries disaster was declared in several regions, Marks noted.
While regions like Kodiak and Chignik are both well above the harvest levels from 2016 (+111% and +540% respectively), other regions such as Prince William Sound (-33%) and the Alaska Peninsula (-45%) are both on pace to have similar harvests to 2016, he said.
Fresh fillets of wild Alaska salmon were less frequently available in supermarkets and big box stores, but freshly frozen wild Alaska salmon fillets were still plentiful for purchase online. Fresh coho fillets moved quickly at Fred Meyer stores in Anchorage at $14.95 a pound, while Carrs Safeway sold out of their coho fillets at $19.95 a pound.
New Sagaya’s seafood shop, also in Anchorage, had fresh cohos fillets for $15.99 a pound and at $9.99 a pound for the whole fish, which were weighing in at about 4.5 to 5 pounds.
