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Fish and Game downgrades Kvichak River run

Total run to Kvichak River lowered from preseason estimate of 15.4 million to 4.7 million, first official downgrade of 2015 run.

Through Sunday, the total run of sockeye to Bristol Bay’s inshore districts is 13.7 million. On Monday, Fish and Game adjusted down the run size headed for the Kvichak River. KDLG’s Dave Bendinger has more:

Audio transcript: The preseason estimate of the sockeye run to the Kvichak River was 15.4 million, which would be split nearly evenly between catch and escapement. On Monday, Fish and Game downgraded the size of the run to 4.7 million, roughly a third of the original. The new target escapement is 2.3 million sockeye. Through Sunday, 910,000 had been counted as escapement.   

The forecast to the Kvichak River may be the only one Fish and Game has to adjust, but indicators that the Bay-wide run is coming in much smaller than forecast are coming into view:

"The 2015 run clearly has not progressed in a way that's consistent with the preseason forecast," said Curry Cunningham at the University of Washington's Fisheries Research Institute. He and Chris Boatright are carefully watching the run, and making adjustments to the forecast.

Cunningham says the lower than expected daily arrival of sockeye to inshore districts is prompting lower a lower in-season estimate.

"At this point in the season, based on what we've seen from Port Moller and catch and escapement, a run size in the range of the mid-to-upper 30's (million) looks more likely than something in the range of the preseason forecast at the upper end of 40 million," he said.

Based on their catches through July 3, the Port Moller Test Fishery wrote that "all district catch and escapements are estimated to be below the pre-season forecasts, which, if true, will cause the total inshore run to be about 30 million." 

The Port Moller Test Fishery was weathered out of effort Sunday and Monday, and only fished partial on Saturday, adding to the confusion of predicting the rest of the 2015 run.

Reach the author at dave@kdlg.org, or fish@kdlg.org.