Port Moller Test Fishery Catches Down on Wednesday and Thursday

Catches at the Port Moller Test Fishery have declined the past couple of days indicating that the peak sockeye run through the test fishery area might have already occurred. The ongoing Test Fishery is intended to give fishermen, processors and managers in Bristol Bay a sense of the sockeye resource that is 6 to 9-days away from the inshore fishing districts in the Bay. Catches as part of the test fishery on Thursday were similar to Wednesday’s catches. Both of those days produced catches down significantly from the previous 4 days of fishing. On Thursday a total of 99 sockeye were caught as part of the test fishery. The largest catch was the 48-sockeye taken at station 6. The catch at station 2 was just 6-fish and the catch at station 4 was 28 sockeye. The catch at station 8 was 17-fish. The crew onboard the Pandalus had equipment issues late in their day on Thursday, which forced them to skip the set at station 10. Instead the Pandalus went back to Port Moller to make repairs. That means that the vessel won’t be able to fish today. The interpretation of the recent catches as part of the Port Moller Test Fishery was issued Thursday night by fisheries scientist Scott Raborn with the Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute. He noted that the daily replacement index dropped off the last 2 days. Raborn wrote that June 23rd was either the peak day of catches as part of the test fishery or the first peak of a bimodal pattern reminiscent of 2010 and 2012. Raborn suggests that if there is a bimodal pattern, it may take 5 to 7-days for the second peak to manifest itself. The cumulative replacement index number through Thursday was 366 and the cumulative traditional index number was 895. The average cumulative traditional index number through June 26th is 1083. In only 8 of the last 24-years has the cumulative traditional index number been lower through June 26th than this year’s 895. The annual Port Moller Test Fishery is scheduled to run through July 10th and it’s run by the Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute. BBSRI is a subsidiary of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game cooperates in the test fishery project and the Department released the latest genetic information on Thursday. A total of 387 sockeye were sampled and 190 sockeye were analyzed from the catch made on June 22nd and 23rd. Given the standard 6 to 9-day travel time puts those fish inshore beginning on Wednesday of next week. The stock composition estimates shows that 42.5-percent of the analyzed sockeye were from the Kvichak River stock. 23.3-percent were apparently bound for the Wood River and 21-percent carried the genetic signal for the Egegik River. 7.4-percent of the sockeye were from the Naknek River stock and 4.1-percent were from the Alagnak River. The genetic signal for sockeye bound for the Igushik River was 1.2-percent and 0.3-percent of the sockeye carried the genetic signal for North Peninsula sockeye. None of the analyzed sockeye carried genetic signals for the Ugashik, Nushagak, Togiak or Kuskokwim Rivers.