Alaska sockeye salmon harvest

This page tracks Alaska's statewide commercial sockeye salmon harvest, known in the fleet as reds, from ADF&G's Blue Sheet, against the preseason forecast, with the harvest broken out by fishing area. Figures are common-property and cost-recovery catch in thousands of fish, preliminary and updated through the season. Sport, subsistence and personal-use harvests are not included. Percent of forecast is a share of the full-season projection, not a good-or-bad call. Scope note: ADF&G's statewide sockeye projection (49.7 million fish) and all-species projection (125.5 million fish) fold in about 5.60 million Upper Cook Inlet sockeye that ADF&G reports as available to all user groups, with no commercial-only figure. To measure the commercial harvest like for like, the percent of forecast here divides by The Run's derived commercial-comparable subtotal (44.1 million fish sockeye, 119.9 million fish all species), not the raw ADF&G total. The full ADF&G forecast, unadjusted, is on the forecast page. ADF&G's own statewide roll-up still adds Kodiak from the same Blue Sheet row this site holds back, so the statewide figures here understate the season by that shortfall.

Where sockeye salmon are caught

Bristol Bay is the sockeye fishery, and by a wide margin: it is the world's largest sockeye run, with five districts of drift and set gillnet fishing a season that can land tens of millions of fish in a few intense summer weeks. Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound's Copper River fishery, and Chignik Lagoon are the next-largest sockeye producers, each landing a few million fish most years, far behind Bristol Bay but still commercially significant regional fisheries in their own right. Harvesters take sockeye almost entirely with drift and set gillnets under limited-entry permits, unlike the troll gear that dominates Southeast's Chinook and coho catch. Chignik's fishery is unusual for running two distinct sockeye stocks, an early run and a late run, tracked and managed separately even though both land at the same docks.

Season and market

Most Alaska sockeye return in June and July, spawning in freshwater systems anchored around a lake, which is why the fishery peaks earlier than the pink and chum runs that stretch into August. Sockeye is Alaska's most economically important salmon species: it does not out-volume pink salmon, but it commands a much higher price per pound, and Bristol Bay alone supplies enough fish to make sockeye the value leader most seasons. The species was traditionally canned for its deep red-orange flesh; more than half the commercial catch today is sold frozen instead. Sockeye roe also carries real value in Japanese markets, a second revenue line on top of the fillet.