Another 'pretty abysmal' year for Yukon River chinook and fall chum salmon

The 2023 chinook and fall chum runs on the Yukon River once again failed to meet conservation targets on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border. 

While not as dire as last year, both runs still ranked as among the worst on-record for both species — the chinook run was the second-smallest, while the chum run was the fifth. 

"It's pretty abysmal," Yukon Salmon Sub-Committee chair Tim Gerberding said in an interview last month. 

"We're in really dire circumstances. It's perhaps not an overstatement to say that, you know, these salmon are literally facing the verge of extinction if something doesn't turn around pretty quick here."

According to preliminary data, the sonar at Pilot Station, an Alaska community less than 200 km from the mouth of the Yukon River, counted 58,500 chinook this year.

Only 15,300 of those fish made it to Eagle, near the Yukon border. 

A minimum of 42,500 chinook are supposed to get to their Canadian spawning waters to meeting conservation goals.

2023 is the fourth year in a row that that target hasn't been hit. 

Meanwhile, an estimated 257,000 to 290,000 fall chum were counted at Pilot this year. Even on the higher end, this was still 10,000 short of the number required to meet the drainage-wide escapement goal. 

Fall chum enter Canada on both the Yukon and Porcupine rivers; 21,600 were counted at Eagle this year, compared to an average of 161,000, while 14,700, or just more than half of the average, were counted on the Porcupine.

Adam O'Dell, a senior stock assessment biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Whitehorse, said that historical averages aren't necessarily a good indicator for Yukon River chinook and fall chum anymore given the "dramatic" shift in the run sizes for both species in recent years. 

"Comparing those long-term averages, it can be quite misleading now because things just appear to be on a totally different scale," he said. 

"Unfortunately, you know, you kind of cross your fingers every year… you still hope to see numbers come back."

Fishing for chinook and fall chum was once again largely closed on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, except for a brief opening in Alaska for fall chum later in the season.