Genetic Stock Composition Of Chum Salmon Harvested In Commercial Salmon Fisheries Of The South Alaska Peninsula 2022 2026 PDF Download

Chinook salmon are harvested in subsistence, commercial, sport, and personal use fisheries throughout the Copper River drainage and in nearshore marine waters. This project was designed to estimate the stock-specific harvest of Chinook salmon in the Copper River District commercial drift gillnet fishery using genetics samples from 2013 through 2017. The Chinook Salmon Research Initiative identified the Copper River as 1 of 12 indicator stocks representing the diverse life history and migratory characteristics of Alaska Chinook salmon. Adult abundance information was identified as a fundamental knowledge gap, including the absence of programs to estimate stock-specific harvest in mixed stock commercial fisheries. This project applied the available baseline of genetic information representing Chinook salmon populations from within the Copper River drainage, around the Gulf of Alaska, and from southern populations to estimate the relative stock compositions of Chinook salmon harvests in the Copper River District commercial fishery. The results show that most of the fish in the Copper River commercial fishery originated from Copper River populations, which is consistent with findings from previous studies. A consistent temporal pattern in the composition of the commercial fishery harvests was observed across the 5-year study. As the season progressed, the proportion of Upper Copper River Chinook salmon decreased, and the proportion of Lower Copper River Chinook salmon increased. The unusually high proportions of nonlocal Chinook salmon in the commercial harvest occurring during 2 of the study years (2014 and 2015) align with other reports of large numbers of out-of-area Chinook salmon in commercial fisheries throughout the southern and southeastern seaboards of Alaska. The results support the historical commercial management approach of providing inriver passage for all temporal components of the run. Genetic data allow for estimating the stock-specific harvests of wild stocks or stocks (with and without coded wire tags) from other areas.