Salmon notes

Here's an update on the 2024 season, which is all but done.

• This will finish as a poor season, at least in terms of harvest volume. The statewide, all-species catch stands at 96.2 million fish. The season likely will finish with a harvest under 100 million for the first time in 37 years, since 1987, when the tally was 96.5 million.

• The Prince William Sound purse seine fishery closes today, perhaps appropriately on Friday the 13th. It's been a nightmare year for seiners with a catch of less than 5 million pink salmon, far below forecast. Expect pleas for disaster relief coming out of Cordova.

• Alaska never has produced many salmon north of the Arctic Circle, but this season's production was particularly paltry at Kotzebue. "The 2024 commercial harvest of 5,392 chum salmon was below the 1962-2023 average harvest of 231,196 chum salmon and the poorest harvest since the state started managing the Kotzebue District in 1962," the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reports.

• It wasn't gloomy everywhere this season. On Aug. 12, OBI Seafoods blew the cannery steam whistle in Petersburg to mark 100,000 cases of canned salmon produced.

A salmon cannery salute to Bob Thorstenson Sr.

On July 28 we reported the passing of Bob Thorstenson Sr., a founder of Icicle Seafoods Inc.

The Petersburg Pilot, the local newspaper in the Southeast Alaska town where Icicle began in 1965, had this today on its Web site:

"Tuesday, at four p.m., production at PFI (Icicle's Petersburg Fisheries Inc. plant) was halted and the steam whistle was sounded in honor of Bob Thorstenson, the company’s founder. The whistle is traditionally only blown to mark summer production surpassing 100,000 cases of canned salmon."