About 25,000 young Chinook salmon were found dead in Alaska after a “mishap” at a fishery in Anchorage, wildlife officials said in a news release.
The smolt were discovered in a canal by a person who reported them to wildlife officials, the release said. The thousands of salmon were intended to migrate into Ship Creek, but were instead seen “floating belly up,” according to the release from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Ship Creek Fisheries Center.
Most of the other salmon in the canal, known as a raceway, had migrated into the creek successfully earlier that day, officials said. However, the fish that didn’t make it were obscured by silt in the water, which made it difficult for hatchery staff to notice that there were still fish remaining before stopping the flow of water into the raceway, the release said.
“The recent incident accounts for a roughly 4% loss in Chinook smolt release numbers in Ship Creek this year,” officials said.
Over 600,000 Chinook salmon smolt are stocked into the creek each year, and they typically migrate into the ocean and return as adults, the agency said.
“This provides opportunity for anglers to fish for Chinook salmon in the lower stretch of Ship Creek, and a determined number of adults are spawned by hatchery staff each year,” the release said. “These fish are all very important to anglers and hatchery staff.”
The fishery will take steps to ensure that the “unfortunate scenario” doesn’t happen again in the future, the release said.
©2022 Cox Media Group
