The McDowell Group released a report on Alaska’s salmon hatcheries. Here are some facts from the report:
-Alaska’s salmon hatcheries created one fourth of the economic value of the state’s total salmon harvest between 2012 and 2016.
-during this period, the average annual harvest is 222 million pounds of hatchery-salmon worth $120 million ex-vessel value.
-In Southeast about 2,000 jobs are related to hatcheries.
-As a percentage of statewide sport-caught fish, hatchery-origin salmon account for 17 percent of sport caught coho, 13 percent of sport caught sockeye, and 8 percent of sport caught Chinook.