Fish Factor: Pace of the Chinook salmon harvest is down 42 percent

Alaska’s 2016 pink salmon fishery is set to rank as the worst in 20 years by a long shot, and the outlook is bleak for all other salmon catches except sockeyes.

“Boy, sockeye is really going to have to carry the load in terms of the fishery’s value because there’s a lot of

misses elsewhere,” said Andy Wink, a fisheries economist with the Juneau-based McDowell Group.

The historical peaks of the various salmon runs have already passed and the pink salmon catch so far has yet to break 35 million on a forecast of 90 million. That compares to a harvest of 190 million pinks last year.

Weekly trackin...