June 13, 2024 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Qawalangin Tribe were unable to get funding to count fish and collect data this summer at Unalaska’s McLees Lake, where the community harvests a large majority of its subsistence sockeye salmon.
But the organizations will be installing a brand new weir and counting salmon for the first time at Iliuliuk Creek.
Annie Brewster, a fisheries biologist with ADF&G, said they will be counting the number of pinks and reds that make it up the creek and into Unalaska Lake.
“We’re expecting to get around 6500 pink salmon and around 500 sockeye salmon,” Brewster said.
Those numbers are based on past foot and drone surveys, which don’t provide reliable data because the lake is so cloudy, according to Brewster.
“That system has so much erosion, it’s hard to see salmon for those surveys, so those numbers are up in the air,” she said.
The banks of the lake are eroding quickly, causing the muddiness of the water, which has also been polluted from World War II activity.
“There is still a lot of solid waste from the war,” Brewster said. “There were suspected chemical barrel dumps during the war into the lake.”
ADF&G weir technicians won’t just be counting salmon. They’ll also be collecting data on the limnology of the area — that’s the water quality and zooplankton.
“That provides us with information on the rearing capacity of the lake,” Brewster explained. “So at what capacity can the lake raise baby salmon and what amounts? What’s the number of salmon eggs that can be laid in beds and gravel nests in the lake and grow up to be mature salmon that will return to the stream?”