A weak coho run just shut down federal commercial salmon fishing in Cook Inlet

Cook Inlet's coho salmon are running weak enough that NOAA Fisheries has closed commercial salmon fishing in the federal waters of the inlet, from Aug. 5 through Aug. 15, to keep the catch from blowing past this year's coho limit.

The closure covers the federally managed Cook Inlet EEZ — the deeper waters three miles and more offshore — not every Cook Inlet fishery or all its waters. But because boats there catch mixed salmon stocks together, the agency couldn't close coho alone; it had to shut down commercial salmon fishing broadly in the federal area to protect the one struggling stock.

The pressure is also reaching state waters. The season opened under a low coho cap, and as federal coho harvest neared its limit, state managers confined Upper Cook Inlet drift gillnetters to a single 12-hour opening in one area, as Alaska News reported this week. The federal closure runs through Aug. 15, but it doesn't by itself decide what happens in state waters outside the federal zone — those openings are the state's call.