Overview of Russia's salmon season 2024
Russia’s Pacific salmon catch 2024 is forecasted at ca.250-260 thousand metric tons, according to Ilya Shestakov, head of the Federal Agency for Fisheries (Rosrybolovstvo).
The catch forecast is actually two times lower that the salmon catch 2023. By the end of 2023, Russia became the world leader in wild salmon production with the fishery result exceeding 600 thousand MT.
As per September 8, 2024, the salmon catch in the nation’s Far Eastern basin fell by 9.6% year-on-year, according to the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO). By that day the Russian fishermen harvested 215.3 thousand MT of Pacific salmon.
At the same time, as per September 13, 2022 (previous even year), the total catch of Pacific salmon in the Far Eastern Fisheries basin amounted to 247 thousand tons. That is, 2024 is still inferior to 2022 in terms of catches by about 12.8%. The deviation from the scientists' forecast for salmon fishery in the Far East was -32.7%.
For example, expectations for the masu salmon were very modest – only 183 tons, but in fact only 41 tons were harvested (-77.6%). Despite the success of pink salmon in many fishing areas, in general, the forecast for this fish was not true by 29.6%. According to VNIRO figures, only sockeye salmon proved good – its catches are 28.9% higher than forecast.
As for the fishing regions, the lion's share of the above catch was traditionally contributed by the Kamchatka Territory – 129 thousand MT namely. For comparison, the contribution of the Sakhalin Region amounted to 38.9 thousand MT, and the Primorsky Territory – 1.9 thousand MT.
Pink
In 2024, a significant increase in the pink salmon population has been anticipated, and this salmon species is now showing growth in many fishing zones indeed. It is especially noticeable on the Amur River, where fishing resumed after a four-year halt. According to VNIRO, pink salmon runs did not increase everywhere, and in general its production decreased by 3.5% (on the previous even year 2022) – as of September 8, 135.8 thousand tons of pinks were caught.
Other
The situation is worse with chum salmon (-26.1%, or 36.1 thousand tons), coho salmon (-33.7%, or 7.5 thousand tons), chinook salmon (-33.4%, or 320 tons) –catches of these species are compared with the same period in 2023. The result for sockeye salmon was 35.6 thousand tons – closer to last year's figure, but still lower (-3.4%).