October 18, 2022 — With a record sockeye season in the books for Bristol Bay, the largest salmon fishery in the U.S. state of Alaska, industry players are now focusing on getting this year’s harvest to market.
Preliminary data from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) recorded a run of 79 million fish – 8 percent over the preseason forecast of 73.4 million fish. The fishery caught 60.1 million sockeye salmon, surpassing the previous record of 44.3 million sockeye set in 1995.
“I was pretty amazed this year that the fish came in such large numbers,” Andy Wink, executive director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association (BBRSDA), told SeafoodSource.
Even with the record number of fish caught, Wink said operations moved smoothly over the two-harvest period in what are the world’s most-abundant sockeye fishing grounds.
Wink said he wasn’t aware of any reports of fishermen being put on limit, which can occur when there are backups at processing plants.