Alaska's Salmon Hatcheries: Strengthening Alaska's wild salmon population.

• Author: Rohloff, Jessica
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION Resource Development

Alaskans love salmon. While the Alaska economy relies on many resource industries, nothing really compares to fish in terms of how fishing speaks to the people of Alaska. It's the hobby of our youth, the inspiration for our art and literature, the time we spend with friends, how we feed our families, how many of us make a living--a keystone of Alaska's unique culture.

Hatcheries play a significant role in supplementing the wild salmon stock that Alaska relies on every year for food and work.

According to the "Alaska Fisheries Enhancement Annual Report 2016" published by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, there are twenty-eight salmon hatcheries operating in the state. Of those, twenty-four are operated by private, nonprofit corporations, funded primarily from the harvest of a portion of the hatchery returns.

Two of the remaining sport fish hatcheries are operated by the state, one is a research hatchery operated by the National Marine Fisheries Services, and one hatchery is operated by the Metlakatla Indian Community.

Mike Erickson and his family own and operate Alaska Glacier Seafoods, a seafood processing company in Juneau they founded in 1996 as a hobby to sell shrimp caught in a fourteen-foot aluminum skiff.

Since the '90s, the business has grown dramatically, processing more than 10 million pounds of fish each year and employing nearly 150 people during peak season. Fish hatcheries have been instrumental in supporting the company's growth. "I can tell you for sure we're where we are today because of the hatcheries," Erickson says.

Alaska Hatcheries Enhance Wild Stocks

Typical for the Last Frontier, fish hatcheries here work differently than they do in the Lower 48. Alaska's hatchery program was explicitly designed to supplement natural production--not replace it.

Fish born in Alaska hatcheries are effectively wild. They are released when they are very small and travel out into the ocean to fend for themselves. They have the same diet as wild-spawned salmon and encounter precisely the same conditions.

Timothy Joyce, interim general manager for the Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corporation, says that salmon hatcheries are nothing like salmon farms that exist in the Lower 48. "We don't feed fish to fatten them up and color them; our fish are wild. They're let go at a very small size and go out into the ocean to compete with everything else."

2016 Total Hatchery First Wholesale Value: $187,000,000 Chinook $3,500,000 2% Sockeye...