Guides
The Alaska salmon season, explained
How the numbers on this site work: how to read the Blue Sheet, what ex-vessel price and escapement mean, the five species and their markets, the statistical week, and how ADF&G forecasts runs. Each guide is built on the same live scoreboard as the rest of the site, so the examples are real and current.
Reading the season
ADF&G Blue Sheet: how to read Alaska's salmon harvest
The ADF&G Blue Sheet is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's running count of the commercial salmon harvest, posted through the season in thousands of fish by region, area, district and species. It covers common-property and hatchery cost-recovery catch only, it leaves out sport, subsistence and personal-use fish, and every figure is preliminary and subject to revision.
What is a statistical week?
A statistical week is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's reporting week, running Sunday through Saturday and numbered from the start of the year. The salmon season covers roughly statistical week 20 in mid-May through week 40 in early October, and run-timing comparisons anchor to the stat week rather than the calendar date.
The Alaska salmon calendar
Alaska's commercial salmon season runs from the Copper River opener in mid-May to the coho fishing of fall, and Bristol Bay's sockeye peak in late June and early July is the stretch that fills the scoreboard fastest. It is a relay of fisheries handing off down the calendar, each region taking its turn as its run arrives.
Management and markets
What is ex-vessel price?
Ex-vessel price is the price a fisherman is paid for salmon at the boat, in the first sale before any processing. It sits below the wholesale price a processor charges and well below the retail price, and ADF&G publishes it on a lag because the final figure includes post-season adjustments and bonuses that settle the following year.
How ADF&G forecasts salmon runs
ADF&G builds its preseason salmon forecasts from the return records of past runs, using sibling models that relate this year's return to how earlier age classes came back and spawner-return relationships that tie a run to past spawning. The forecast is the preseason benchmark, the harvest is what actually lands, and the percent of forecast is the pace against it.
Escapement in plain English
Escapement is the count of salmon that get past the fishery and up the river to spawn, and escapement goals are the spawning numbers a run needs to sustain itself. Managers open and close fishing in season by emergency order to hit those goals first, which is why in-season harvest can swing hard even in a strong run.
Limited-entry permits and what they cost
Alaska caps the number of permits in each commercial salmon fishery under a system called limited entry, and the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission keeps the public record of who holds them and what they sell for. A permit's resale value is the market's long-run read on confidence in the fishery, and the CFEC keeps the current numbers.
Tenders, processors and the price chain
A tender is a vessel that buys salmon from the fishing fleet out on the grounds and hauls it to the processor, the middle link in how a fisherman gets paid. What a permit holder finally earns is a base price at delivery plus post-season adjustments and bonuses that settle later, and together those make up the ex-vessel price.
Yukon River Chinook returns
Yukon River Chinook returns are counted by sonar, not by catch: Pilot Station estimates the run entering the lower river and Eagle counts what reaches the Canadian border. Those in-season passage numbers, not the commercial harvest, are what fishing decisions on the Yukon wait on.