Prince Wiliam Sound’s commercial fishing fleet upped their harvest to 1.9 million salmon through Aug. 1 – up from 1.4 million a week earlier – in a season that has seen a lower overall catch.
Demand meanwhile has kept retail prices statewide relatively robust, with shoppers aware the season for some species of Pacific salmon is drawing to a close.
Updated preliminary commercial harvest reports as of Aug. 4 showed the Prince William Sound catch included 764,000 chum, 595,000 sockeye, 507,000 pink, 5,000 coho and 4,000 Chinook. A week earlier the catch stood at 1.4 million salmon, including 742,000 chum, 592,000 sockeye, 99,000 pink, 4,000 coho and 3,000 Chinook.
Statewide harvest bumped up from 40.9 million to 44.7 million fish, including 35 million sockeye, 6.2 million chum, 3 million pink, 206,000 coho and 95,000 Chinook salmon.
Through Aug. 1, only 36% of Alaska’s forecasted salmon harvest had been caught. This year’s catch continues to trail last season’s for all five Pacific salmon species caught in Alaska, especially pink salmon, according to McKinley Research Group, which compiles in-season weekly reports on behalf of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.
The cumulative statewide pink salmon harvest stood at 2.6 million fish, or 5% of the forecasted statewide pink catch of nearly 56 million. The pink catch is down by over 90% in Prince William Sound and Southeast Alaska compared to 2024, a historically low pink salmon year for those regions.
Statewide, the keta harvest was down 61% from 2025, with the summer harvest peak now passed, the report noted. Coho meanwhile are starting to be caught in large numbers, but at present the coho harvest is down 745 year-to-year from 2025.
Test fisheries at Point Gardner and Kingsmill concluded last week with results indicating below-average runs for keta and pink in inside waters of Southeast Alaska, especially the early pink run. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game conducts this fishery to assess pink and keta abundance as spawning fish return to inside waters.
The keta catch was below average all six weeks of the test fishery and the pink catch was below average in five of six weeks, the McKinley report noted.
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