How this is built
Methodology
What data The Run pulls, where it comes from, and how often it refreshes.
What we pull, and from where
Everything comes from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, all public:
- The live harvest is the Blue Sheet, ADF&G's preliminary in-season commercial salmon catch report: the season's cumulative harvest in thousands of fish, by region, area, district and species. ADF&G refreshes it up to twice a day from mid-May through September. Cells ADF&G suppresses as confidential stay blank here, never filled with a zero.
- The benchmark is the April forecast, ADF&G's Run Forecasts and Harvest Projections report, published once a year before the season.
- The value data is ADF&G's preliminary season-summary tables, the annual ex-vessel price and value by area and species, published months after the season ends. The price on any page is therefore always the last published season's number, labeled as a look back.
How often
In season the Blue Sheet is pulled daily and the site rebuilds the same day, so the scoreboard tracks the newest pull. The forecast updates once a year in April, and prices update once a year when ADF&G publishes the season summary. The weekly brief goes out Saturday. Each harvest reading is dated to the day it was pulled, the forecast to its April publication, and each price to the season it reports.
For how to read the numbers once they are in front of you, see how to read this.
Republishing our charts and statistics
The charts and statistics on The Run are free to republish. Use them in an article, a report, a class, a presentation, or a post — you do not need to ask us first. We ask one thing in return: credit The Run with a visible link back to the page you took the figure or chart from, and keep that link live.
Every chart has an Embed chart button with a snippet you can paste straight into a web page. Because it points at the live image, the chart you embed today keeps updating itself as new data lands — you never have to swap in a fresh screenshot. Every data page, guide, and issue has a Cite button that hands you a ready-made citation line, including the date the data runs through. If you are quoting a number, keep that date: it is what tells your reader how current the figure is.