Kodiak's seiners can fish — but not for a single king

Kodiak's salmon season is open in stretches — the state keeps extending seine time in the Alitak and Southwest Kodiak districts — but one fish is strictly off-limits: the king.

Across the entire Kodiak Area, commercial seiners are barred from keeping any Chinook 28 inches or longer. If a king comes up in the net, it has to go back in the water unharmed. "Chinook (king) salmon 28 inches or greater in length may not be retained," area management biologist Geoff Spalinger wrote in the order, a restriction that holds until further notice.

It's a small window on a much larger problem. King salmon have collapsed across Alaska, and the response has been consistent: keep the abundant fisheries open while walling off the kings wherever they're vulnerable. So Kodiak's boats can fish — for sockeye, for pinks — but the once-prized king stays untouchable, thrown back one by one, a quiet marker of just how thin those runs have gotten.