Alaskan Wild Salmon Run Information - Wild Salmon Management & Resources online.

Wild Alaskan Salmon Information regarding salmon run management and resources for learning how wild salmon can be protected.

Our thanks goes to the ASMI, for information used on this page Wild Alaskan salmon is healthy, sustainable and is a Pacific tradition year around. Only wild salmon can guarantee you are getting the health values of Omega 3 oils, the diet for a healthy heart and long life. World famous, the Alaska wild salmon run is truly a natural wonder. Robust, renewable and dynamic, the wild salmon supply is carefully managed and has the benefits of many years of scientific advances. Lucky for you, the consumer, the Alaskan wild salmon market is an industry we can count on to feed us and continue to astonish us with it's beauty and mystery far into the future. Recent discoveries of the health benefits confirm what many have known for years ... Alaska wild salmon is a healthy way to enjoy gourmet food. See our Wild Salmon diet information. Every aspect of Alaska’s salmon fisheries is strictly regulated, closely monitored, and rigidly enforced. The State of Alaska’s statutes and regulations control such factors as: • Fishing areas, which prohibit harvests too far offshore where the incidental catch of salmon bound for other rivers would be too high, or too close inshore where the salmon are crowded, and too vulnerable. In managing the fisheries on an in-season, day-to-day basis, Alaska’s fishery managers can open and close certain areas to fishing, in response to fish behavior, water levels, and other conditions. This allows a reasonable separation of salmon, so that each fishery targets a specific run of fish. • Fishing vessel licenses are rigidly limited by a system known as “limited entry”. This means that anyone wishing to fish for salmon must buy an existing license from another fisher, because new licenses are not issued. This allows for rational management of the fishery without undue impacts to the long-term health of the salmon stocks. • Fishing gear such as purse seines and gillnets must be constructed of multi-filament mesh, rather than the less-visible monofilament. They must float at the surface, where their catch can be observed. All nets are limited in their length, depth, and periods of operation, as are the gear and operation of troll (hook) gear. Trawl nets are not allowed for salmon. The fishing gear itself, and the way it is fished, virtually eliminates incidental catch of marine mammals or birds. Alaska’s fisheries management system is well-crafted and has served well for almost four decades, as demonstrated by the sustainability of Alaska’s salmon harvests. The Alaska Board of Fisheries sets harvest policies, regulations, and allocations, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) conducts biological research, and enforces the board’s decisions. The dominant goal is the harvest policy known as “fixed escapement”. This means that management’s first priority is to ensure that sufficient numbers of adult spawning salmon escape capture in the fishery in the ocean and are allowed to spawn in the rivers, thus maintaining the long-term health of the stocks. Escapement goals can be reliably achieved for each species, each stock, every year. All human uses of salmon, especially commercial fishing, are subordinate to this guiding principle. Because of the natural variability of environmental conditions such as El Niño, the total number of adult fish returning to spawn may vary. In order to maintain escapement, it is the commercial harvest that fluctuates from year to year. The salmon fisheries are tactically managed while they are actually taking place. Alaska has led the way with its in-season salmon management approach, which has become recognized among fisheries management agencies around the world. In addition, the in-season management decisions are made from a local office, by the biologists most knowledgeable in that fishery, rather than in some distant headquarters. This allows ADFG to account for the natural variability of the runs. ADFG manages over 15,000 salmon streams throughout the state. Alaska’s abundant, well-managed commercial salmon fisheries support a thriving commercial fishing and seafood processing industry; by far the largest employment sector in the state. The overwhelming majority of Alaska’s salmon are landed and processed at seafood plants in scores of small coastal communities all along Alaska’s 47,300 miles of coastline. These long-established villages and towns depend on salmon as their economic base, and therefore have a strong incentive to support long-term, sustainable management of the fisheries. Alaska’s management of its fisheries is ecologically sound, in other important ways: • All Alaska salmon live in their natural habitat in the cold, clean waters of the North Pacific Ocean. Here they grow to adulthood at their natural pace, eating only their natural foods like shrimp, herring, squid, zooplankton, and other marine life. They swim free on the high seas and then return to their natal streams on their own schedule (see salmon migration map below). This is why Alaska’s salmon fisheries are seasonal, rather than year-round. Alaska salmon are wild; there are no salmon farms in Alaska. In order to protect Alaska’s wild fisheries from potential problems, salmon farming was prohibited by the Alaska legislature in 1990 (Alaska Statute 16.40.210). • Alaska salmon helps to support robust populations of bears, eagles, and a host of other species of birds and mammals. The abundance of these predator and scavenger salmon-eating species is testament to the success of Alaska’s salmon management. Alaska salmon are an important and integral part of their natural ecosystem. Unlike stocks in other parts of the world, no Alaska salmon stocks are threatened or endangered. Alaska’s salmon have been abundant for millennia, and they are managed to ensure their future abundance. In Alaska, the fish come first! Information provided by ASMI Alaskan Wild Salmon World famous, the Alaska wild salmon run is truly a natural wonder. Robust, renewable and dynamic, the wild salmon supply is carefully managed and has the benefits of many years of scientific advances. Lucky for you, the consumer, the Alaskan wild salmon market is an industry we can count on to feed us and continue to astonish us with it's beauty and mystery far into the future. Recent discoveries of the health benefits confirm what many have known for years ... Alaska wild salmon is a healthy way to enjoy gourmet food. The five species of Alaska salmon are members of a large family of fish known as salmonidae which are abundant throughout the temperate zones of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Salmon and their salmonidae relatives, which include Atlantic salmon, are active and aggressive predators who demand the high levels of oxygen most commonly found in cold, rushing streams, estuaries, and the upper levels of the ocean. Pacific salmon occur from California north along the Pacific coast throughout the Pacific Ocean, Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean waters adjacent to Alaska. Alaska’s wild salmon resource is the greatest in the world.

Alaska salmon belong to the genus Oncorhynchus, a name formed by combining two Greek words, “onco” meaning hook or barb, and “rhyno”, meaning nose. The scientific names for each of the five species were given during the exploration of Siberia, and reflect the native vernacular names for the fish. Thus, we have:

Alaska salmon are anadromous, that is, they spawn in fresh water and the young migrate to the sea where they mature. The timing of spawning and migration varies among the five species, but they all need abundant, pure, fresh water for spawning. The fresh water that attracts the maturing salmon from the ocean vastness to the interior of the continent to spawn also draws the salmon to man’s doorstep.

Although the spawning characteristics of each of the five species of Alaskan Wild Salmon differ, each maintains the same timing year after year, and, with few exceptions, the mature adults return to the stream of their birth.

Salmon which will spawn in the headwaters of a river or lake system (king, coho and sockeye), arrive earlier than do the pink and chum which spawn closer to tidewater. Because salmon do not eat after they have entered fresh water, they leave the ocean heavy with the fats and nutrients on which they will subsist during their freshwater phase. The longer and more rigorous the freshwater trip, the more fat the fish will carry as he leaves the ocean. A Yukon River king headed for spawning grounds 2,400 miles (4,000 kilometers) away and 2,200 feet (670 meters) above sea level near Lake Teslin will enter the river an unusually rich, vigorous fish.

How salmon return so unerringly from mid-ocean to a stream which may be only a trickle hundreds of miles from tidewater is not fully understood by biologists. Except where humans have interfered, however, the salmon returning to the various river systems and streams of Alaska are unique species which may mingle in the ocean and even in the estuary, but return faithfully to the gravel from which they emerged two to six years earlier. Fish that enter fresh water early in the season are more brightly colored than those that arrive later, but all salmon turn darker as the time to spawn approaches. Pronounced morphological changes take place, particularly in the spawning male. The female selects a suitable patch of gravel, and excavates the nest. When she is ready, she allows the male to fertilize her eggs as she deposits them in the gravel.

Five to seven months after spawning, the young salmon fry emerge from the gravel where the spawning pair deposited and fertilized the eggs the fall before. Some of the fry will go to sea almost immediately, while others, such as sockeye, king and coho will remain in streams and lakes for a year or more. When the fry migrate toward the sea, they undergo certain changes which prepare them for life in salt water; during this stage of life they are called smolts. In the estuary, where salt and fresh water mix and food is abundant, a smolt may double or even triple its weight before venturing westward into the Gulf of Alaska or Bering Sea. Depending on the species, the salmon may go within a few miles of the Kamchatka Peninsula which extends southward from Siberia toward the western tip of the Aleutian Islands.

Growth rates in the ocean are no less astonishing than those in the estuary. A two-inch pink salmon which leaves the estuary and moves offshore in early-to-mid summer can return slightly more than a year later as a two-foot, five-pound adult. Pink salmon spend a year in ocean waters; other species may spend four, five or even six years in the ocean pastures growing to prodigious size. Any "125 pound plus" king salmon landed in Southeastern Alaska is thought to have spent seven years in the ocean.

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