Salmon notes

• The Bristol Bay catch now stands at 23.6 million sockeye toward a preseason harvest forecast of 32.3 million.

• Dillingham radio station KDLG has a report on the Northline Seafoods freezer barge and its alliance this season with Silver Bay Seafoods. Listen to it here.

• The Southeast Alaska summer Chinook troll fishery appears to be progressing slowly and will remain open "until further notice," the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said yesterday. "Based on landed catch and reported harvest onboard freezer vessels to date, less than 40,000 of the 83,700 Chinook salmon allocation has been harvested over the first 10 days of the fishery."

• Looking farther south, to Canada, the forecasted run size for Fraser River sockeye is 7.7 million fish, the Pacific Salmon Commission reports.

Northline barge heads north

Northline Seafoods announced on Facebook today that its 400-foot freezer barge, the Hannah, departed Bellingham for the Bristol Bay salmon fishery.

This is notable, as the company had seen upheaval in recent weeks with the abrupt resignation of its chief executive, Ben Blakey.

This will be the barge's third season packing sockeye in Bristol Bay.

To the best of our knowledge, Northline and its barge are under the control of Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp. and Zachary Scott, a Seattle private investment firm.

It's believed Northline might work cooperatively with a larger processor, Silver Bay Seafoods, to handle Bristol Bay salmon catches this summer. But thus far, no company has publicly confirmed such an arrangement.

Salmon notes

Here are a few important developments in the salmon fisheries.

• The Bristol Bay sockeye fishery continues and the harvest has now exceeded the preseason forecast. The catch currently stands at 26.5 sockeye, well above the projected 25 million.

• Northline Seafoods says its Bristol Bay freezer barge is back to full operations following a fire that hobbled the platform earlier in the season.

• Hannah Heimbuch tells the story of how salmon setnetters at Alitak, on the remote south end of Kodiak Island, saved their season after processor OBI Seafoods dropped the fleet this year. The setnetters found a helping hand in Silver Bay Seafoods, Heimbuch writes.

• It's a big day for Alaska's troll fishery tomorrow in San Francisco, where the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral argument in the Wild Fish Conservancy case. The organization has been trying to shut down the fishery, which it claims is harmful to endangered killer whales.