Biologists do not expect either to reach their goals for fish reaching their spawning grounds.
The booming Bristol Bay salmon run has broken the record set just last year, while on the Yukon River, Chinook are too scarce to harvest.
The tomcod harvests in the Kongiganak, Cavuuneq and Ilkivik Rivers have been a failure. Also in other areas, based on observations from Chevak and Chefornak. Both the surface and bottom trawl results show a clear decline in tomcod biomass in the North Bering Sea.
A decades-long decline in salmon in the Yukon River has reached a crisis this year, forcing harvest closures and prompting emergency shipments of salmon from other regions of Alaska to river residents who are otherwise facing food shortages.
Chum returns are the lowest on record, leaving communities with empty freezers and uncertainty about getting through the winter.
The Kuskokwim River king salmon run does not look particularly strong this year, but chum numbers look even worse. Historically, around 60% of the salmon in the river at this point in the season would be chum or sockeye, but right now Bethel Test Fishery numbers show that just over 20% of the salmon are.
A decline in caribou abundance is causing coyotes and wolves to come closer to the community of Quinhagak. When a rabid coyote attacked a local dog, it forced the village to bring in a veterinarian from outside the village - and temporarily lift the Southwest community's travel ban.
Midnight on Dec. 31 brings the close of 2019 and also the close of the hunting season for Mulchatna Caribou on federal lands. The federal season,
Fish in a local pond may have been washed to their new location during a recent severe rain event.
This is the 6th observation on this topic received in LEO Network from Southwest Alaska since July 22, 2019.
A burying beetle was seen for the first time by an observer in Tuntutuliak.
Smart started finding dead fish in his trap near Dull Lake about two or three weeks ago. Now there are hundreds and hundreds of them.Some local officials suspect water pollution killed the fish, but state officials offered an alternative explanation. According to the Fish and Game representative a local fisherman forgot to check a blackfish trap and may have dumped the dead fish in Dull Lake.
2/20/15 Needle fish die-off - Kongiganak, Alaska, USA
On the Yukon River, subsistence salmon fishing is being closed to protect king salmon as they migrate upriver.
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