Thursday July 25, 2024
KDLG —
This year in Bristol Bay, fishing crews noticed that sockeye were on the small side. On July 19, the Alaska department of fish and game confirmed those observations. The agency says that for this point in the season, the sockeye returning to Bristol Bay were, on average, the smallest they’ve ever seen. This continues a decades long trend.
So far, the average weight of Bristol Bay sockeye was 4.2 pounds this year. Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Stacy Vega says that’s the smallest average weight on record. “Fish are smaller, weigh less than, than they have in the past and against our historical averages,” Vega said.
The exact number could change a bit by the end of the season, but Vega expects it will stay low. That smaller fish size also means a smaller overall catch. By mid-July, Vega says, fishing crews had hauled in almost 130 million pounds of fish. That’s almost 70 million pounds less than this time last year.
Vega says that all kinds of factors go into fish size. The same is true with humans. Age is the most obvious: The tallest toddler is still shorter than the shortest teenager.