Record salmon harvest predicted
Preliminary numbers supplied by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game show that the upcoming salmon fishing season will likely produce about 27% more fish than an average year, and about 39% more fish than last year.
In 2014 some 158 million salmon were harvested, at an average weight of about 2.07 kg, for a total catch of 721 million lbs (327,000 tonnes). Most of these salmon are pink salmon, which are produced in large numbers in hatcheries and then released into the ocean. The average weight of the 96 million pink salmon caught in Alaska last year was 3.44 lbs, or 1.6 kg.
The forecast for the 2015 Alaska salmon season looks like this- in numbers:
| Species | Recent years average, thousands | 2015 Forecast, thousands |
| Chinook (King) | 500 | (No numbers supplied) |
| Sockeye (Red) | 40,000 | 58,000 |
| Coho (Silver) | 4,500 | 4,500 |
| Pink (Humpback) | 110,000 | 140,000 |
| Chum (Dog) | 18,000 | 17,000 |
| Total | 173,000 | 221,000 (Including Chinook) |
If the average weight of the fish caught in Alaska this year is similar to that of the salmon caught last year, the season will bring in some 455,000 tonnes of fish.
