U.S. fisheries in Southeast Alaska (SEAK) harvest stocks of Chinook salmon originating from river systems in Alaska, Canada, and the continental U.S. Thus, fisheries in SEAK are managed under the purview of the Pacific Salmon Treaty (PST), in which an abundance-based management framework is used for Chinook fisheries. This requires management to have access to reliable information on stock-specific catch, escapement, and recruitment to forecast indices of abundance in PST fisheries.
This project aims to improve fishery management and provide independent estimates of stock composition in commercial troll and sport Chinook salmon fisheries in Southeast Alaska. This type of information has been used to measure the effectiveness of management actions in SEAK by combining genetic stock identification (GSI) with CWT information to estimate the harvest of wild SEAK stocks, as well as to contribute to applications outside of SEAK (e.g. estimating age-specific terminal returns of stock groups and forecasting returning run sizes). This project is an integral part of a larger SEAK GSI program for Chinook salmon, which includes comprehensive coverage of major gillnet, troll, and sport fisheries. The objective of this project is to use GSI to determine the stock composition of fish harvested in the SEAK Chinook salmon fisheries.
