Not enough kings reaching Canada

It remains to be seen whether enough Yukon River king salmon will reach Canada to satisfy Alaska’s border passage requirement as set forth in a treaty between the U.S. and Canadian governments.

According to the Yukon River Salmon Agreement, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is obligated to manage the Yukon king run so that about 45,000 fish reach the border this season — a minimum of 33,000 for escapement and another 12,000 to make up for commercial harvest in Alaska.

It’s going to be close either way, fish managers say.

As of Thursday, 26,500 kings had been counted by a sonar at Eagle, about 50 miles from the Canada border.

State fisheries biologists are projecting a border passage of 50,000 fish, according to Steve Hayes, who oversees the Yukon River chinook run for the Department of Fish and Game.

This year’s Yukon king run wasn’t as strong as state fisheries biologists predicted or fishermen hoped. Only about 125,000 kings had passed a sonar counter at Pilot Station, located 120 river miles upstream of the mouth. That’s 20 percent below the average of 155,000 kings, said Hayes.

“It wasn’t a disaster but it wasn’t a great run,” said Hayes, summing up the 2007 chinook return.

The department appears to be meeting its minimum escapement goals just about everywhere and though subsistence fishermen had a harder time catching fish this season, most reported they were able to put up enough salmon for the winter, Hayes said.

The fact that the state allowed commercial fishermen in the lower Yukon River to harvest 33,500 king salmon early in the run, however, has prompted some criticism from fishermen on the upper Yukon and on the Tanana River who were not allowed to commercially fish.

“Fish and Game screwed up,” said Fairbanks fish buyer Virgil Umphenour, who typically buys 1,000 to 2,000 kings a year from commercial fishers on the upper Yukon and Tanana. “They could tell the run was weak and they let them fish too much.”

But state and federal biologists in Alaska, as well as those in Canada, said this year’s run was tough to gauge and appeared to be a strong one, judging from the first pulse of kings to hit Pilot Station.

“At the time we made the decision to have a commercial fishery it looked like a very reasonable management action to take,” said Hayes. “The small harvest we took based on run size to me was acceptable.”

While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service expressed concern over the commercial fishery, federal fisheries biologist Russ Holder didn’t fault state biologists for opening it.

“Based on the preseason projection we had and what we anticipated, I think we made the appropriate decisions,” said Holder.

Canadian officials are keeping a close eye on the number of kings reaching the border, said Pat Milligan, a stock assessment biologist for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Whitehorse.

“We’re concerned there may not be a lot of strength in the latter part of the run,” he said.

While the Canadians are running a test fishery and allowing Natives to fish for subsistence, there has been no commercial fishing and there probably won’t be, said Milligan. That doesn’t sit well with Canadian fishermen, he said.

“We’re getting calls on a daily basis from commercial fishers asking us when they can fish,” said Milligan.

There are no specific ramifications if enough fish don’t reach Canada, said Hayes.

“I’m sure there will be serious discussions at the (Yukon River Panel) meeting this fall about whether we could have done anything different,” he said.

The minimum escapement goals were met in both the Chena and Salcha rivers on July 22, though returns in both rivers are only about half the average. The Chena and Salcha river stocks make up the largest component of the Yukon River chinook run — between 30 and 40 percent.

The department’s aerial surveys and other escapement projects in the lower and middle river also indicate the return will exceed low-end escapement goals, Hayes said.

The Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association, which represents both commercial and subsistence fishermen on the Yukon and Tanana rivers, is still hopeful enough fish will reach the border to meet treaty requirements, said executive director Jill Klein.

“We’re still hearing about late kings coming into the Yukon,” she said, noting that a batch of big kings were reportedly caught at the Rampart rapids in the past week.

The last of the run’s three pulses is expected to arrive in Eagle on July 31, which should push the border passage number higher.

“If we weren’t making our escapement goals and subsistence needs were not being met and we weren’t meeting the border passage requirement we wouldn’t be happy, but that’s not the case yet,” said Klein. “We’re still hopeful.”

This is the third year the Department of Fish and Game has used a sonar counter at Eagle to help estimate the border passage. In past years, a Canadian mark and recapture program was used to estimate the number of fish that reached Canada.

While the mark and recapture program is still the official index used to estimate border passage of salmon, Alaska and Canadian officials say the Eagle sonar is probably the more accurate of the two and could replace the mark and recapture program as the main index for border passage in the future. The disparity between the two different counts is a big one — the mark and recapture estimate is about 40 percent lower than the Eagle sonar — but Canadian experts say that DNA information and other programs confirm the mark and recapture estimate is low.

“There is no ideal index of abundance,” said Milligan. “They all have limitations. We may find the sonar program has the least amount of limitations.”

In the future, the department would like to take DNA samples of fish as they enter the river to determine early on if certain stocks could be at risk, said Hayes, the Alaska biologist. If biologists know one part of the run is weaker than another they can adjust fishing time and effort accordingly to ensure those fish don’t get hit hard by fishermen, he said.

“We’re talking over 2,000 miles in river length with a lot of different stocks,” said Hayes. “If you had an earlier picture of what the survival components were of the different geographic areas I believe that would help us make better decisions in season.”

The state takes DNA samples of fall chums at Pilot Station and there is a three-day turnaround time to get the samples tested, said Hayes.

“I’d like to see that begin to be used inseason for chinook salmon to get a better picture of the stock composition we’re dealing with,” he said.