Photo: Chung Chow, BIV.
Commercial fishing boats tied up at docks in Steveston Harbour.
A record number of Pacific salmon were harvested last year by commercial fishers in the U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and South Korea, with pink salmon providing an overwhelming amount of the abundance.
According to recently released statistics from the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC), a total of 1.1 million metric tonnes of Pacific salmon were harvested by the commercial fishing sector in 2023 – 726 million fish in total. That is a record, in terms of number, and was the third largest harvest on record by weight, according to the NPAFC.
Russia took the lion’s share of the commercial harvest – 55 per cent, or 602 million salmon. The U.S. took 427 million salmon, with Alaska fishermen accounting for most of that (423 million).
Japan accounted for 5.6 per cent of the total harvest. B.C. and South Korea accounted for less than one per cent each.
While commercial fisherman in B.C. harvested 503,000 sockeye in 2023, Alaskan fishermen caught 52 million sockeye.
And while B.C. commercial fishermen caught 1.5 million pink salmon, Alaskans caught 154 million pinks.
Pink salmon accounted for 63 per cent of the 2023 global harvest of Pacific salmon by weight, followed by chum (19 per cent), sockeye (15 per cent) and coho (2 per cent).
The NPAFC notes that, for Alaska, the 2023 sockeye catch was 25 per cent lower than the record catch in 2022.
As for Canada (i.e. B.C.), the NPAFC notes that pink, chum and sockeye salmon have historically been the most abundant salmon species.
“In 2023, commercial catch for all species remained low and total catch was the fourth lowest on record,” the NPAFC notes for the Canadian commercial catch.
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