After two disastrous seasons, chum salmon came back to Kotzebue Sound this summer, and some commercial fishermen say it was one of the best years they’ve had. But the public may never know just how good it was.
John Rae has commercially fished in Kotzebue Sound for more than four decades. He said this season felt different right away.
“You could see the excitement and the lightning in the air, so to speak,” Rae said. “Everybody was smiling when they pulled up to the dock, and everybody had fish in their boat. It was so much better this year than the last two years put together.”
Those two years were bad. In 2024, fishermen caught about 5,400 chum, the poorest harvest since the state began managing the fishery in 1962. Last year’s harvest of about 35,000 fish was the fishery’s fourth-lowest on record.
But it’s harder to say just how much better this season was. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s season summary said the commercial harvest beat the preseason forecast of up to 150,000 chum but fell short of the 10-year average of about 296,000. It doesn’t say by how much.
Kevin Clark, the department’s Kotzebue area manager, said state rules restrict Fish and Game from revealing the actual number.
“If we have less than three buyers in the area, and all it takes is one of those buyers not to waive confidentiality, then the overall harvest information is confidential,” Clark said.
He said the department can’t release the total until both buyers sign confidentiality waivers.
The fishery also had two buyers in each of the last two years, and both times the totals were made public. In state records going back to 2007, this is the first season the harvest total has been withheld.
Mike Scott owns one of those two buyers, Arctic Circle Wild Seafoods. He said withholding harvest numbers is common in a competitive seafood market.
“Sometimes it’s not good to let your competitors know how much quantity you’re pulling out,” Scott said.
Scott said his company has released its numbers in past years. The other buyer, Copper River Seafoods, declined to comment.
Subsistence and commercial fishermen want better data
Rae said he didn’t know the numbers were confidential until KOTZ told him. He said fishermen have a right to know how their season went.
“It should be public news, right?” he said. “We have the right to know about what is going on, and I don’t think that’s right.”
Seth Kantner said he has commercially fished in Kotzebue Sound for 52 seasons. He asked Fish and Game for the numbers and got the same answer.
“I wish that information was public,” Kantner said. “I would like to see Fish and Game just go ahead and revisit that. Ask the buyer, like, now that the season’s over, sign it back over so it’s open to the public.”
The harvest total isn’t the only missing number. Buyers and fishermen have said the fishery needs better data.
For years, a test fishery on the Kobuk River near Kiana provided the state’s only in-season count of chum heading upriver to spawn. The state cut the program in 2024. Since then, the fishery has been managed mainly by how many fish fishermen catch.
Fish and Game plans to restart aerial surveys next summer. The state will also study whether to bring back a sonar on the Noatak River, using part of $2 million Sen. Lisa Murkowski secured for salmon research statewide. The program also includes genetic work on Noatak and Kobuk river chum and expanded sampling of the commercial harvest.
Subsistence users want counts, too. At a meeting of the Northwest Arctic Subsistence Regional Advisory Council in September, council member Mike Kramer of Kotzebue called for sonar on the Noatak and Kobuk rivers, where the region’s chum return to spawn.
“My main concern is returns,” Kramer said. “Four years from now, five years from now.”
The funding for Fish and Game’s new monitoring program lasts three years. After that, the department said, long-term monitoring will depend on money.
