June 24, 2024 — Sport fishermen in Juneau may be disappointed come Monday, because king salmon will largely be off limits this summer. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has announced an emergency closure for most near-shore fishing areas around Juneau.
Douglas Island Pink and Chum, or DIPAC’s executive director Katie Harms said hatchery returns are expected to be quite low this year. That’s because most of the chinook that were supposed to come back were killed when a landslide severed the hatchery’s supply of freshwater from Salmon Creek during an atmospheric river in December 2020 that caused flooding and mudslides across the city.
“We had to prematurely release all those chinook salmon that were in raceways at the time,” Harms said. “They entered saltwater before they were biologically able to process saltwater and likely, mostly died.”