Restrictions will likely tighten next year on the amount of salmon that the Bering Sea pollock fishery is allowed to incidentally catch, but the restrictions are not expected to have a big impact on Kuskokwim salmon returns. The offshore pollock fleet has been harvesting below the lower limit of its bycatch cap for years.
On Monday, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which governs the groundfish fishery, approved the use of a revised model the state created to measure the amount of salmon returning to the Kuskokwim River. That model is one of the estimates used when calculating the total amount of salmon returning to several Western Alaska rivers: the Kuskokwim River, Upper Yukon River, and Unalakleet River combined.
Using the new model is expected to bring that estimate of the total number of fish returning to Western Alaska rivers down. When that number falls below a threshold of 250,000 fish, the cap on salmon bycatch allowed in the Bering Sea drops.
Diana Shram, a Fishery Analyst for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, sat through the three hours of presentations and discussions that the council went through before making its decision.
“It was made very clear that it’s very likely that we will be below the threshold going into our 2019 groundfish fishing year,” Shram said.
According to the new model, returns to Western Alaska rivers have been below the threshold for at least seven years and are expected to fall short again this season. That will lower the amount of bycatch allowed by Bering Sea fleets next year from 60,000 kings to 45,000. But dropping the limit is not likely to do much for the number of king salmon returning to the Kuksokwim River.
Fleets have been harvesting below the lower end of the cap for about as long as the returns have been falling below the threshold, and according to genetic sampling, less than 3 percent of bycatch kings would have returned to rivers in Western Alaska.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will decide whether to instate the lower cap after the state submits its estimate of Western Alaska salmon returns in October.
