UW-FRI 2025 Preliminary Bristol Bay Forecast
/The Bristol Bay fisheries community expressed interest in a preliminary preseason forecast for Bristol Bay sockeye salmon abundance in the coming year (2025), based upon data available at the time of the last daily in season release (late-July 2024) from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G). Based on this interest we developed a preliminary preseason forecast for Bristol Bay run size in 2025. As this preliminary preseason forecast is made prior to both finalized inseason data for the 2024 run and the formal run reconstruction process, this should be considered an advisory rather than a formal forecast given its lower accuracy and aggregated summary across stocks.
The standard UW-FRI Preseason Forecast that will be released in November 2024, will include 2025 abundance estimates by age class for all nine rivers in Bristol Bay, and the anticipated 2025 harvest in numbers and pounds.
The UW-FRI Preliminary (August) Preseason Forecast for 2025 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run size is 49.6 million sockeye salmon. This preliminary forecast suggests that 39% of the 2025 total Bristol Bay run will be 2-ocean sockeye and 61% 3-ocean sockeye. The 2025 Preliminary Preseason Forecast of 49.6 million is 18% below the 2013-2023 (10-year) average of 60.1 million sockeye, and nearly equal to the 2003-2023 (20-year) average. The projected 2025 inshore harvest is 32.4 million sockeye salmon or 185.3 million pounds.
