Governor Bill Walker decided Wednesday to include Southeast Alaska’s pink salmon into a request for a federal disaster declaration.
The Walker administration is already seeking disaster declarations for commercial pink salmon fisheries in Prince William Sound, Kodiak, Chignik and the Lower Cook Inlet. Like Southeast, they all fell below their pink harvest forecasts for this year as well as five year averages.
In Southeast, the catch this year was about 18 million pinks well below the 34 million forecast.