Alaska managers open some salmon fisheries and close others as runs diverge

Within a single week this month, state fishery managers around Alaska opened some commercial salmon fisheries and shut others, each decision turning on how the fish are running in that particular place.

In Upper Cook Inlet, set gillnetters in the Northern District were ordered off the water until further notice. The Department of Fish and Game called it a conservation measure, saying it is taking a cautious approach to the area's coho this season and that the closure is meant to let more coho reach spawning streams in Northern Cook Inlet. The fishery could reopen if projections show escapement goals will be met.

Farther north, managers made the opposite call. In Norton Sound, the department opened a short, one-day commercial gillnet period across several communities, from Golovin to Unalakleet, targeting chum and coho. Catch rates had run slightly below average, and most of the region's monitoring projects are out of commission, but the one working counting tower, on the Kwiniuk River, projects enough coho to meet the escapement goal with a surplus to harvest after subsistence needs are met. The opening did not change any subsistence schedules.

Lower Cook Inlet split the same way. One district, Kamishak, stayed closed to seining after an aerial survey turned up fewer pink salmon than expected, while Aialik Bay stayed open daily after a survey counted more sockeye than its escapement goal required.

These are the latest in a string of Cook Inlet fishery actions this summer, including a federal closure of Cook Inlet's offshore waters under a coho cap.

Federal analysis has documented that repeated Cook Inlet closures cost drift gillnet operators, processors and coastal communities harvest and revenue they do not recover later. Sport-fishing interests argue the restrictions are necessary: Andy Couch, a Mat-Su Fish and Wildlife Commission member and Northern Cook Inlet guide, has argued that heavy commercial drift fishing on Kenai and Kasilof sockeye leaves too few northern-bound coho to fill spawning goals in streams like the Deshka and Little Susitna.