NSRAA has requested that ADFG close Deep Inlet to all common property fisheries beginning end of day Saturday, April 5th, after troll day. We continue to have concerns that sufficient brood stock has recruited to Bear Cove/Medvejie Hatchery. This years chum egg goal at Medvejie is 102 million with an estimated brood stock need of 120,000 adults to achieve that goal. Our brood stock estimate on Wednesday was 90k chum. We have utilized approximately 20k chum for brood stock and our estimate of remaining chum in Bear Cove using aerial surveys is 70k chum remaining. We have not observed large recruitment over the past week and continue to see age 3 year old chum make up over 70% of the return. Age 3 chum tend to be smaller, produce fewer eggs, and typically more than 50% are male. In addition, as per our Brood Stock policy, we are preparing to take an additional 10 million eggs to make up a portion of the 24 million shortfall at Hidden Falls of summer chum brood. Announcement should be out late Wednesday or early Thursday morning.
It is anticipated that there will not be additional opportunity at Deep Inlet for common property fisheries for the 2020 season. The Deep Inlet return continues to perform poorly, currently at 41% of forecast. The return also appears to have peaked a week earlier than most years. There has been a continued drop off of numbers since reopening on August 27th and the sex ratio has dropped to 46% male. We will continue to monitor chum brood stock needs and numbers at Bear Cove and Deep Inlet. Current plan is to begin looking at brood stock capture opportunities late next week in Deep Inlet.
Crawfish and West Crawfish Inlet will remain open. Crawfish continues to surprise with the best return of any chum enhancement project in SE Alaska this season. Current projections will put the total return over 1 million fish. While this is only 65% of the pre-season projected forecast that is a much better return than any other NSRAA project. To date approximately 391k chum have been caught by seine, 60k by troll and 525k for cost recovery putting the total catch to date at 975k chum. There has been a high percentage of 3-year old chum in Crawfish (58%) but not as high as we are seeing in Deep Inlet. Sex ratio is also holding up a little better in Crawfish with the Sunday seine sample at 50% male. As with Deep Inlet it appears the peak was last week and we are on the downhill side of the bell curve. Bear in mind Crawfish Inlet is also a last resort for any shortfall of chum brood stock at Medvejie and if necessary may be utilized. Any potential closure would not occur until Sunday Sept 13th at the earliest.
While this closure is hard to take on a poor year in many regards. It is imperative for future years that we make our egg take goal. I have to believe that we will have better survival, prices and a less onerous operating environment in 4 to 5 years when the fish from this years egg take return.
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