Stock assesment of the chinook salmon return to the Naknek River, Alaska, during 1992
Coggins LG and Bingham AE. 1993. Stock assesment of the chinook salmon return to the Naknek River, Alaska, during 1992. Fishery Data Series. 93-26. Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Anchorage, AK
Drift gill nets were used to capture 1,068 adult chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha in the lower Naknek River for marking as part of a mark-recapture experiment. Marked fish were recaptured during a creel survey of the sport fishery and during escapement surveys of the spawning grounds. Based on recovery data from the escapement surveys, an estimated 51,344 chinook salmon >= 635 millimeters entered the lower Naknek River from 5 June until 14 August. During the escapement recovery event in which 681 chinook salmon, 635 millimeters or greater in length, were examined, only 13 had been marked in the marking event. Due to this extremely low recapture rate, and a similarly low recapture rate during the sport fishery recovery event, a host of assumptions required for unbiased estimates of inriver abundance were not tested. Because these assumptions were not addressed and because the estimated inriver abundance minus the estimated sport harvest is nearly nine times as large as the total average historical escapement index, this estimate is believed to be biased high by an amount.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Coggins, Lewis; Bingham, Allen
- Date of Issue
- 1993
- Publisher
- Alaska Department of Fish and Game
- Units
- KATM , SWAN
- Keywords
- Anadromous Fish, Animal Studies, Chinook Salmon, Chum Salmon, Coho Salmon, Creel Survey, effort, escapement index, Harvest, inriver abundance esitmate, Katmai National Park and Preserve AK, Naknek river, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha Katmai National Park and Preserve AK, Rainbow Trout