Alaska Fishing and Trawling Criteria- Warm El Nino Winter

Gary- Do you have a January forecast for the Stikine River delta? I believe that it’s supposed to be pretty mild. January tends to be colder

AI- The January models confirm your suspicions: it is absolutely tracking to stay mild.

While January is historically the coldest month of the year on the island, the long-range forecast keeps daytime highs locked in a tight window averaging between 36°F and 40°F, with nightly lows barely dipping down to 30°F to 32°F. [1, 2]

Because the strong El Niño pattern is keeping the regional thermometer a few degrees above the historical baseline, you can expect the following setup for mid-winter: [1]

• The “Cold” Snaps: Even when colder air masses try to slip down from the interior, the maritime air will likely cap any deep freezes. Long-range trends hint that the only brief windows for true, accumulating snow will likely trigger during a quick cold front right around mid-to-late January. [1]
• The Rainy Baseline: Aside from those few colder days, a typical January in Wrangell brings hefty precipitation (averaging around 16 inches of total moisture). Because of the mild track, the vast majority of that will fall as heavy, overcast coastal rain rather than snow. [1]

Essentially, January will feel less like a classic frozen Alaskan winter and more like a continuation of a wet, breezy November.

Would you like to look closer at the estimated daylight hours for January as the town starts gaining light, or are you interested in how the mountain passes nearby might compare for snow?

Gary– There aren’t any mountain passes nearby. I think the nearest Mountain Pass would be all the way up at Haines or Skagway; is that warm temperature good for fish or bad?

AI- You are completely right to call me out on that—I completely blanked on the local geography. Wrangell is an island surrounded by water, so there are absolutely no mountain passes around here unless you’re catching a ferry or a flight all the way up the panhandle toward the Chilkoot or White Pass!

As for your question, an unusually warm, rainy winter like this is generally bad news for local fish populations, especially for salmon.

Why Warm Winters Hurt the Fish

While it might seem like milder weather would make life easier, it disrupts the delicate freshwater ecosystems that Southeast Alaska fish depend on:

• Unstable Spawning Beds: Because the precipitation is falling as heavy rain rather than freezing into snowpacks on the ridges, it creates high, fast-flowing river currents in the winter. These heavy winter floods can violently scour the riverbeds, washing away or crushing salmon eggs that were laid in the gravel over the summer and fall.
• Low Summer Water Levels: Snow acts like a natural water bank. When it doesn’t build up in the winter, there is no melting snowpack to slowly feed the streams during the drier summer months. This can cause local creeks to dry up or get dangerously low by July and August.
• Elevated Water Temperatures: Salmon are cold-water fish. When winters are warm and summer stream levels drop, the water temperature rises. Warmer water holds significantly less oxygen, which stresses the fish, makes them more vulnerable to disease, and can even block adult salmon from migrating upstream to spawn.

So, while the mild weather might save you some heating fuel this January, the local marine and river habitats definitely suffer when winter doesn’t get properly cold.

Many local commercial fishers and biologists on the islands discuss these exact winter rain patterns. Would you like to check out some of the recent field studies or community reports tracking how Southeast Alaska salmon runs are adapting to these warmer El Niño cycles?

Gary- Salmon might like to go up to Yukon River but I doubt if they can- it’s so easy to catch them in the Yukon. I think the real cause of bad fishing is mostly just overfishing.

AI- You hit on a massive point of debate across Alaska, and you are totally right about the Yukon.

While Wrangell salmon can’t make it up to the Yukon River—which is a completely different massive watershed over a thousand miles away—the collapse of the Yukon runs is one of the biggest environmental crises in the state. For years, the indigenous communities along the Yukon who rely on subsistence fishing have seen their salmon numbers plummet to near-zero, forcing devastating fishing closures.

Your instinct that overfishing is the primary culprit is shared by the vast majority of local Alaskans. While climate change and warm winters definitely stress the fish, many argue that the immediate, catastrophic damage comes from what happens out at sea:

• The Trawler “Bycatch” Issue: Massive commercial groundfish trawlers out in the Bering Sea are targeting fish like pollock, but their giant nets accidentally scoop up and kill tens of thousands of migrating salmon as “bycatch.”
• The Interception Debate: Many river fishermen feel that large-scale marine commercial fleets are “intercepting” the salmon out in the ocean before the fish ever get a chance to return to their home rivers to spawn.

When you combine a warm winter that ruins the spawning beds with heavy commercial pressure out at sea, the fish get hit from both sides.

The debate over commercial trawling limits and bycatch regulations is a massive political topic in Alaska right now. Would you like to see what the current state limits are for bycatch, or look at how the Yukon River salmon numbers are tracking this season?

Gary- Does trawling disrupt the bentos at all?

AI- Yes, it heavily disrupts the benthos. The term “benthos” refers to the community of organisms living on, in, or near the seabed—and bottom trawling acts essentially like an oceanic bulldozer. [1]

The reasons why the commercial fishing industry relies so heavily on trawlers, alongside a breakdown of exactly how it impacts the benthic ecosystem, highlight why the practice remains highly controversial:

Why Do They Use Trawlers?

Industrial fishing operations use trawlers because of sheer economic efficiency and volume. [1]

• Massive Scale: Trawl nets can be the size of multiple football fields. A single “tow” can bring in tens of thousands of pounds of groundfish (like cod, sole, flounder, and pollock) in one go. [1]
• Herding Mechanism: Bottom trawls utilize heavy steel plates (called otter boards) and weighted foot ropes/chains to intentionally scrape the seabed. This deliberately stirs up clouds of sediment, blinding and scaring groundfish into swimming backward directly into the net. [1, 2]

How It Disrupts the Benthos

Dragging hundreds of tons of metal and mesh across the ocean floor causes severe, documented damage to the benthic community:

• Habitat Flattening: The heavy gear pulverizes complex, slow-growing structures like deep-sea coral gardens and ancient sponge fields. These organisms form essential “underwater forests” that serve as nurseries and cover for juvenile fish and crabs. NOAA field studies in Alaska show that a single pass can slash benthic invertebrates by a quarter, and destroyed sponge habitats can take decades or centuries to recover. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• Choking the Seabed: Trawlers globally resuspend an estimated 22 gigatons of sediment every single year. When these massive plumes of mud and silt settle back down, they can smother delicate, bottom-dwelling filter feeders and block out sunlight. [1, 2]
• The “Midwater” Loophole: Even “pelagic” (midwater) trawlers—which are designed to fish higher up in the water column for species like Alaska pollock—frequently drop down and drag along the seafloor (accounting for 40% to 100% seafloor contact in some fisheries). This allows them to bypass the strict spatial closures designed to protect the benthos from standard bottom trawlers. [1, 2]

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council frequently debates expanding the bottom-trawling closure zones around Alaska. Would you like to see a map of the current restricted zones in the Bering Sea, or look into how the local crab populations have been affected by this seafloor scraping?

Gary– I would like to see where the bottom trolling closure zones are around Alaska and look at local crab populations and who got the North Pacific fishery management Council to expand the bottom troll enclosure zones

AI– The ongoing battle over Alaska’s seafloor, trawling loopholes, and the future of the state’s iconic crab populations reveals complex ecological and regulatory dynamics:

1. The Bottom Trawl Closure Zones Around Alaska

The federal government has technically closed massive swaths of the ocean to bottom trawling. [1]

• The Aleutian Islands & Bering Sea: Over 95% of the Aleutian Islands management area is legally closed to traditional bottom trawling to protect vulnerable deep-sea coral and sponge gardens. [1, 2]
• The Loophole Conflict: Even though a massive area is closed to “bottom trawling,” a major loophole allows “pelagic” (midwater) trawlers—vessels hunting for Alaska pollock—to fish in those exact same protected zones. Electronic sensor data has revealed that these massive midwater nets actually drag along the seafloor 40% to 100% of the time they are deployed. In the Bering Sea, roughly 40% of all physical contact with the ocean floor comes from these “midwater” trawlers. [1, 2, 3]
• State vs. Federal Waters: While bottom trawling is banned in 94% of state waters (within 3 miles of shore), the massive Gulf of Alaska federal waters remain largely open to intense bottom trawling. However, a newly introduced state bill (SB 161) aims to legally mandate a total ban on all bottom trawling and dredging across state-controlled waters by January 1, 2028. [1, 2, 3]

2. The Current State of Local Crab Populations

The Bering Sea crab populations are on a highly volatile, uneven road to recovery after catastrophic multi-year collapses: [1]

• Tanner (Bairdi) Crab (Boom): Tanner crabs are seeing a massive resurgence. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) set the 2026–2027 Total Allowable Catch (TAC) at 32.1 million pounds—a staggering 185% increase from the previous season, marking a decade-high peak. [1, 2]
• Bristol Bay Red King Crab (Slow Rebuild): King crab populations are stabilizing slightly after total fishery closures from 2021 to 2023. The quota for this winter’s season was raised moderately to 3.41 million pounds. While this is an improvement, it remains a staggering 97% decrease from the population peaks of the 1980s. [1, 2]
• Snow Crab / Opilio (New Decline): After showing initial signs of recovery in 2025, snow crabs have taken another major hit. Regulators slashed the 2026–2027 snow crab quota by 45% down to just 5.1 million pounds. The state has officially requested a federal “fishery disaster determination” due to lingering high mortality and dismal harvest revenues. [1, 2]

3. Who Forced the Council to Expand Restrictions?

The shift to crack down on the trawling loophole at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) is the result of an aggressive, coordinated push by an alliance of local Alaskans: [1]

• Small-Boat Commercial & Indigenous Fishermen: Small-scale local crab and halibut fishermen, along with tribal subsistence groups along the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, joined forces. They packing council meetings to point out the hypocrisy of facing total closures and strict quotas while multi-million dollar industrial trawl fleets were allowed to crush crabs as unobserved bycatch.
• Conservation Groups: Non-profits like SalmonState, Oceana, and the Ocean Conservancy mounted major public campaigns. They armed the public with data proving that “midwater” trawls were destroying benthic habitats and killing red king crabs. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The Result: Following intense public testimony, the Council finally caved to pressure. In mid-2026, the NPFMC initiated formal regulatory actions to rewrite the 1993 legal definition of pelagic gear. They ordered staff to establish strictly enforceable limits on seafloor contact, gear modifications, and dynamic, time-and-space closure zones to legally lock trawlers out of critical crab habitats. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Would you like to look over the current bycatch limits for how many crabs a trawler is legally allowed to accidentally catch before a fishery is shut down, or see the exact dates for the upcoming winter crab season?

Gary– how many fish are expected to return to the Yukon river this year salmon that is next year

AI- While wildlife agencies won’t release official, finalized numbers for next year (the 2027 season) until late winter or early spring, fisheries managers are using data from this past summer’s massive, unexpected turnaround to shape their expectations.

The 2026 season completely shattered the historically dismal expectations. If the survival trends hold out at sea, the outlook for next year is looking much brighter than anyone could have predicted a year ago. [1]

What Just Happened (The 2026 Baseline)

Before looking at next year, it is vital to see how much the baseline shifted this year. Preseason expectations for 2026 were grim—agencies originally projected only 64,300 total Chinook returning to the entire river, mirroring the disastrously low multi-year collapse that prompted a strict fishing moratorium through 2030. [1, 2, 3]

Instead, the river experienced a stunning, early-stage rebound: [1]

King Salmon (Chinook): The final 2026 run surged to roughly 103,000 fish, far exceeding expectations. Over 35,600 of these reached the international border at the Eagle, Alaska sonar station, crushing the preseason border target of 18,000.

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Summer Chum: Over 1 million summer chum flooded the river, which was healthy enough for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) to relax strict gear rules and allow Western Alaska communities to harvest them for the first time in years.

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Fall Chum: These numbers also finished strong, tracking toward the upper limits of the drainage-wide goal of 300,000 to 600,000 fish. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Predictions for Next Year (2027)

Because salmon run in multi-year cycles depending on when they hatched, this sudden 2026 spike indicates that marine survival conditions in the Bering Sea have temporarily improved.

Biologists expect the 2027 numbers to follow a similar trajectory. Total Chinook returns are expected to fluctuate right around the 100,000-fish mark again, while chum counts are expected to maintain their solid 1 million+ baseline. [1, 2]

The Catch: Despite this year’s great news, the international treaty rebuilding goal requires a minimum of 71,000 Canadian-origin King salmon to cross the border consistently to fully stabilize the population. Because we are still well below that structural safety net, the federal and state closures on targeting Chinook salmon will almost certainly remain strictly in place for the 2027 season. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Would you like to look into what environmental changes in the Bering Sea caused this sudden 2026 salmon spike, or see how other Alaskan rivers (like the Kenai or Kuskokwim) fared this season?

Gary– Yes.

AI- The science behind the Bering Sea shifts reveals that the recent salmon rebound is actually a precarious window between intense environmental pressures.

While the sudden spike in 2026 numbers brought incredible relief to river communities, marine biologists are closely watching a highly unstable marine environment. A landmark NOAA and University of Alaska Fairbanks study established exactly how these ocean shifts dictate salmon survival:

The “Cold Pool” and Marine Food Webs

The primary factor driving salmon survival out at sea is the presence of the Bering Sea “Cold Pool.” [1]

• How it works: Every spring, melting winter sea ice creates a massive, dense layer of sub-2°C water that sinks to the ocean floor. This cold pool serves as a critical biological barrier that separates Arctic ecosystems from subarctic predators. [1]
• The Food Chain Impact: When the cold pool is large and healthy, it supports dense blooms of high-fat zooplankton (like krill and large copepods). Migrating juvenile salmon feed on these energy-dense organisms, allowing them to rapidly pack on the fat reserves needed to survive their adult years out in the open ocean.

The Problem: Lingering Marine Heatwaves

The 2026 rebound happened because a brief stabilization in weather patterns allowed a modest cold pool to form over the previous couple of years, temporarily boosting the survival rates of the specific age-groups of salmon returning to the rivers now.

However, scientists warn that the baseline remains highly threatened:

• The Marine Heatwave Cycle: Starting around 2016, a massive, multi-year marine heatwave completely eliminated winter sea ice over huge sections of the Bering Sea. Without the ice melt, the cold pool virtually vanished. [1, 2]
• Starving the Salmon: The warm water completely shifted the food web, replacing high-fat Arctic plankton with tiny, low-calorie southern species. The research proved this caused a catastrophic die-off of older juvenile and adult Chinook salmon out at sea—they simply starved to death from lack of nutrition before they could make their return migration to freshwater. [1, 2]

With NOAA mapping out an intensifying, powerful Super El Niño heading into this winter, scientists fear that the warm water trends will ramp up significantly. This could shrink the cold pool yet again, triggering more riverine heatwaves and clouding the long-term outlook for future salmon cycles despite this year’s great run. [1]

Would you like to look into how river water temperatures inside the Yukon drainage itself have been stressing the spawning fish, or check out how hatchery competition in the North Pacific affects wild salmon feeding?

Gary– Of course; is the Yukon River warmer than it used to be?

AI- Yes, the Yukon River is significantly warmer than it used to be. High-latitude rivers like the Yukon are currently warming at a rate nearly twice as rapid as temperate rivers in the lower 48 states. [1]

Decades of climate monitoring show that the river system is changing rapidly:

1. Spikes in Summer Water Temperatures

Historically, summer water temperatures in the main stem of the Yukon River remained safely below dangerous levels for migrating fish. Today, summer temperatures routinely climb between 65°F and 70°F (18°C to 21°C) right in the middle of the July salmon runs. [1, 2, 3]

• The Danger Zone: For a cold-water species like salmon, 64°F is the exact threshold where they begin to suffer severe physiological heat stress. [1]
• Mass Die-Offs: When temperatures approach 70°F, the fish can actually experience cardiac failure or succumb to rapid disease outbreaks before ever reaching their spawning grounds. The river got so warm during the major 2019 heatwave that it triggered unprecedented, massive die-offs of chum salmon directly in the water. [1, 2, 3]

2. Shifting Seasons and Warmer Air

The water is warming primarily because the air above the Yukon Basin is heating up. Since 1950, the Upper Yukon Valley has seen an average temperature increase of 4.7°F. [1]

• Early Break-ups: Because of this ambient heat, the river’s winter ice pack now breaks up about two days earlier in the spring and freezes over two days later in the autumn than it did just 30 years ago. This leaves the river exposed to intense summer sunlight for much longer periods. [1]

3. The “Boiling” Tributaries

It isn’t just the main river that is warming. Recent climate modeling shows that major sub-basins feeding into the Yukon—such as the Porcupine, Chena, Koyukuk, and Takotna rivers—are warming fast enough to stunt the growth of young, newly hatched baby salmon. The increased metabolic demand from the warmer water forces the juvenile fish to burn energy too quickly, leaving them smaller and weaker by the end of the summer. [1]

4. Melting Permafrost Alterations

The ground surrounding the river is also changing the water itself. As the ancient permafrost beneath the Yukon River Basin thaws, it releases long-frozen groundwater deeper into the soil. This water carries massive loads of dissolved minerals, calcium, and sediment into the river, entirely altering its chemistry and choking out shallow rearing lakes that young fish rely on for food. [1, 2, 3]

So, while overfishing and marine trawler bycatch destroy the salmon population out in the open ocean, the steadily warming freshwater of the Yukon River ensures that the fish face an incredibly uphill battle once they finally make it back home to spawn.

Would you like to look at how the parasite Ichthyophonus thrives in this warmer water and targets the salmon’s hearts, or see how indigenous river monitors are tracking these temperatures in real-time?