As the summer winds down, Outdoor Explorer looks at one of the worst years of salmon fishing in memory in southcentral Alaska. The Susitna drainage was expected to be bad and was worse. Kenai king fishing continued a bad trend of 10 years. And Cook Inlet sockeye numbers were the worst in many decades. We’ll review what happened, why it happened, and talk about the impacts on anglers and communities. We’ll also get into predictions of the future and what we need to know to go from here. The ocean survival of salmon is a big area of questions that has left us much in the dark.
We’ll also have a piece from Kodiak about similar problems, related to ocean temperatures, with the crash of cod fisheries.
And lastly, we’re joined by Ricky Gease of the Kenai River Sportfishing Association. Ricky actually thinks fish and game should have shut down more streams and shut them down soon, as his group hopes to someday rebuild salmon fisheries that have been struggling for a long time.
HOST: Charles Wohlforth
SEGMENTS:
- Segment 1: “Why fish are missing, when will they be back?”. Matthew Miller, Regional Fisheries Management Coordinator for Fish and Game.
- Segment 2: “Local researchers try to understand why Pacific Cod stocks are crashing in the gulf”. Mitch Borden from KMXT in Kodiak.
- Segment 3: “Kenai River sport fishing industry”. Ricky Gease, Executive Director of the Kenai River Sportfishing Association
LINKS:
- Alaska Department of Fish & Game
- Local researchers try to understand why Pacific Cod stocks are crashing in the gulf
- Kenai River Sportfishing Association
BROADCAST: Thursday, August 23rd, 2018. 2:00 pm – 3:00 p.m. AKT
REPEAT BROADCAST: Thursday, August 23rd, 2018. 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. AKT
SUBSCRIBE: Receive Outdoor Explorer automatically every week via:
cwohlforth (at) alaskapublic (dot) org | About Charles
