July 17th Weekly Return Update

Summer chum returns to the Sitka Area this past week have declined since the gillnet closure. The gillnet fleet ended last week (St Wk 28) with their best weekly harvest this season of just over 48k chum salmon and a total weekly Deep Inlet combined harvest of 200k chum harvest between seine, gillnet and cost recovery. This is a 90k weekly drop from prior week. Returns to Hidden Falls last week of summer chum plateaued with the previous week and a weekly harvest of 228k chum. Of note for Hidden Falls is that the male ratio went up from 51% male to 66% male from previous week. We confirmed this with processors as this is an unusual shift in ratio for this point of the return. Next several openings at Hidden Falls will indicate what this shift means in overall return numbers. Seine opening line restrictions around Kasnyku Bay have begun at Hidden Falls and will continue until brood stock is secured and cost recovery fishing is completed. To date we have secured approximately 1/3 of brood needs and chum are recruiting volitionally through the barrier net in increasing numbers.

Chum returns to SE Cove and Thomas Bay continued to increase last week with a weekly harvest of 65k and 90k respectively. Both Thomas Bay and SE Cove continue to have male sex ratios in excess of 50% with SE Cove sample from July 14^th showing 70% male.

Samples of Point Augusta fisheries, along with Point Gardner and Kingsmill test fisheries continue to indicate a significant presence of Hidden Falls and SE Cove bound chum. Though the most recent samples indicate a drop to less than 50% male in those fisheries. Test Fishing otolith data is available on our website under the 2024 Fishing tab. Link here https://www.nsraa.org/?page_id=5485

Deep Inlet closed to commercial fishing on Thursday July 11^th to allow completion of cost recovery. Since the closure approximately 165k chum salmon have been harvested putting cost recovery progress near 50% complete. Harvest for cost recovery significantly declined in the last two days and the reopening of Deep Inlet will be delayed until next Wednesday July 24^th as the potential earliest reopening date. The reopening will depend on cost recovery progress. It appears that we are on the tail end of the summer chum run with recent sex ratios in cost recovery harvest of only 38% male. To date the fall run chum have yet to make much of an appearance only making up 2% of the last sample from July 12^th.

SE Cove will close to common property fisheries after this Thursday’s (July 18^th) seine opening to facilitate cost recovery. To date we have only harvested 16% of the combined cost recovery goal between SE Cove and Gunnuk Creek. This is mainly due to the Gunnuk Creek return coming in significantly below forecast.

NSRAA will work to harvest the remaining cost recovery volume as quickly as possible and the front page of our website will show our progress on the Sitka Area and SE Cove cost recovery progress bars. These progress bars are updated daily as cost recovery occurs.