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Deep Inlet Notice
To Deep Inlet THA Fishery User Groups:
A reminder about boat traffic and anchoring near island homes in the Deep Inlet area.
Please review our plan:
Berry Island Resident Impact and Noise Reduction Plan
July 23 Weekly Update
Returns across the board continue to under perform forecasts and this past week it has become clear Hidden Falls will not make brood stock goals. At Hidden Falls we are seeing less than 20k chum at the weir and barrier net with little activity in Kasnyku Bay. There continue to be reports of chum between Round Island and Takatz but their behavior is indicative of early fish staying offshore and not congregating into larger schools. A total of 16m eggs have been taken to date. In order to preserve the best opportunity for additional chum brood stock for Hidden Falls the Thursday seine opener at SE Cove was canceled. SE Cove will continue to remain closed until we have secured sufficient brood stock for Hidden Falls. Unfortunately this may utilize the remainder of the chum return to SE Cove. The Sunday seine catch at SE Cove was less than 10k chum and the build up since then has been weak. This morning we loaded approximately 4k live chum onto the tender Lady Rosemary for transport to Hidden Falls. They arrived at Hidden Falls around 1pm with less than 1% mortality. These chum have been placed into a holding pen for acclimatization and eventual release behind the barrier net to ascend the fish ladder. We continue to fish at SE Cove collecting additional brood stock. Due to the slow build up at SE Cove we will likely cease fishing at end of day Thursday and restart Monday.
Lady Rosemary offloading adult chum from SE Cove at Hidden Falls Thursday July 23rd.
As all of you are aware chum returns across the region are meager. Deep Inlet chum catch took a sharp drop this past week and continues to be very poor. It is clear there is a break between the early Hidden Falls summer run and the fall Medvejie stock return. Chip Blair, our Data Analyst, put together a chart looking back at 35 years of chum catch statistics through stat week 29 for Alaska. Not only is this years chum return poor for SE Alaska, it is the worst since 1989, statewide is also tracking similar (link to data https://www.nsraa.org/?page_id=4630).
This past Tuesday we collected the first chum cost recovery from Crawfish Inlet. This initial effort was to clean out the last of the returning Chinook to the project and to begin evaluating the numbers of chum in the Inlet. A total of 3,000lbs of chum were caught with a 10.2lb average and an 89% male sex ratio. Next week we anticipate sufficient numbers to begin cost recovery on a routine basis. Cost recovery will be limited to the east half of the SHA in Crawfish Inlet and will occur until the full goal of $4m dollars is harvested.
July 15 Weekly update
While returns to SE Cove and Deep Inlet continue near or on forecast, Hidden Falls chum broodstock remains our primary concern at this time. Few fish have pushed into the inner bay and what spotty information we have received does not indicate a large volume outside of Kasnyku Bay. While we continue to monitor the numbers returning to Hidden Falls it is becoming clear we need to begin implementing back up brood stock options for Hidden Falls chum. Our first two options utilizing DIPAC or Port Armstrong brood stock look to be marginal options at best. DIPAC is already looking at moving fish from Amalga Harbor to Gastineau Hatchery and the Port Armstrong return is not looking strong either. NSRAA began preparing for this type of shortage over 3 years ago and we now have the Hidden Falls chum brood stock returning to both Gunnuk Creek and Medvejie Hatchery. While the numbers are not large, as all returning fish are 3 year olds, we will be taking eggs from both Gunnuk Creek and Medvejie returning Hidden Falls stock chum to make up any shortfall at Hidden Falls. Unfortunately as the numbers of fish returning to those two facilities are small, this also means we will likely need to close for Hidden Falls brood stock one of the few bright spots in the SE Alaska seine fishery, SE Cove. We will be collecting otolith and sex ratio information first thing Friday morning from the Thursday catch at SE Cove. Decision will be whether to close SE Cove Sunday or let it go one more time and close next Thursday. We have the ability to utilize up to 55,000 adults (~55 million eggs) from SE Cove. This summer is the first year NSRAA has placed a port sampler in Petersburg to help gather otolith and scale samples from the developing fisheries at SE Cove and Thomas Bay. The ability to gather reliable information real time from Petersburg is critical for decisions like this one. While I continue to be hopeful that Hidden Falls will still produce sufficient brood stock the reality looks less likely with each passing day.
July 8 Weekly Update
A gradual improvement has occurred at all of NSRAA return sites since last week. This past week we have seen an increase in chum catch at both SE Cove and Deep Inlet with a total Deep Inlet catch of 37k for stat week 27. The increases have put us back on track with our forecast curve for this point in the season. While that is great news, my optimism is tempered with the state and region wide return failures, male chum sex ratio lower than would be anticipated for this point in the run, and average chum size dropping to 6.2 lbs at Deep Inlet. There are reports of new chum moving into the Hidden Falls THA but they continue to stay offshore and not moving into Kasnyku Bay. We continue to monitor the Hidden Falls chum return and evaluating options if run is short of brood stock needs. At Medvejie our concern with the Chinook brood stock has been minimized. Strong recruitment over the past week has put us over 80% of our total Chinook brood stock needs and a closure for sport and commercial harvest doesn’t appear to be necessary at this time. Overall good news on the progress of our returns but much uncertainty and angst remains on how the season will play out.
July 1 Weekly Update
Across the board returns continue to be slow and coming in at, or below, the lower range of our forecasts. At Medvejie we have secured approximately 30% of our Chinook broodstock needs and are evaluating a Bear Cove closure to sport and commercial fishing next week if conditions do not improve. Deep Inlet chum catch continues to tick up in numbers. We are ahead of the 2019 Deep Inlet chum catch to date but tracking right on the lower range of our point forecast of 1.48 million. Hidden Falls continues to disappoint with less than 10,000 fish caught to date and will be closed until further notice beginning with the July 2 Thursday seine opener. Southeast Cove appears to be slowly picking up and the catch there is about half the Hidden Falls catch to date. There has been minimal seine effort at Thomas Bay that we are aware of and has resulted in a harvest of less than 100 chum. Dist 8 gillnet opened this week and we will be otolith sampling area 108-60 later today to see if the fleet is picking up any Thomas Bay bound chum. Both the Hawk Inlet and the Point Gardner test fisheries this week had dismal chum catches with a total of 105 and 44 fish respectively. Hopefully the change in weather will shake things up but so far a disappointing start during a very gloomy time across our state, country and world. Enjoy the sunshine the best you can and if you happen to be in Sitka the 4th of July hasn’t been canceled and the fireworks are still on for July 3rd at 1130pm. Stay safe.
UFA Message to the Fleet
UFA reminds us all to do are part in making this a successful fishing season in light of COVID-19 concerns.
Click on the image below or here to view UFA’s flyer which contains links to coronavirus mandates information and UFA’s COVID-19 page.
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