March 9, 2017 — A revelation that a large portion of sockeye harvested by Kodiak commercial seine fishermen originate in Cook Inlet may change the way the fisheries are managed, but no one’s quite sure how yet.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game recently completed a multi-year study taking genetic samples from sockeye harvested in the Kodiak Management Area seine fishery, about 70 miles southwest of Homer in the Gulf of Alaska. The study, which spanned the years between 2014 and 2016, found that a significant percentage of the sockeye harvested in that fishery were of Cook Inlet origin in two years, up to 37 percent in one year.
Cook Inlet fishermen have long theorized that Kodiak fishermen catch some Cook Inlet fish, but the study has provided hard data, at least for those years. The data, first presented at the Kodiak Board of Fisheries meeting in January, is the first time a mixed-stock analysis was conducted on Kodiak sockeye fisheries and was originally requested by the board as part of a longtime project to study stock composition in the Kodiak Management Area to further develop the management plans.