Start here
How to read this
Every page is built the same way, so once you read one you can read all of them.
The season scoreboard
Start here. The scoreboard is the whole season on one screen: how far Alaska's commercial salmon harvest has come against the preseason forecast, ranked by fishing area. The percent of forecast is the cumulative harvest divided by ADF&G's April projection. It climbs as each fishery opens and peaks, so early low percentages are the run still building, not a weak year.
The district pages
Each fishing area, Bristol Bay, Prince William Sound, Southeast and the rest, gets a page with its cumulative harvest by species, its forecast, and its percent of forecast, plus the last published ex-vessel prices where ADF&G has them. The chart is the area's cumulative run this season for its headline species.
The species pages
Each species, sockeye, pink, chum, coho and Chinook, gets a page with the statewide cumulative harvest against the forecast, broken out by fishing area. Sockeye are the value engine of the season even when pinks drive the fish count, so the sockeye page is the one to watch for the dollar story.
The forecast archive
The forecast page is ADF&G's April Run Forecasts and Harvest Projections, by area and species, the benchmark the whole scoreboard measures against. We report it as ADF&G publishes it and never adjust it. Some cells carry no projection because ADF&G does not forecast that area or species for the year.
The units and what is counted
Harvest and forecast are in thousands of fish. The catch is common-property commercial harvest plus hatchery cost-recovery fish; sport, subsistence and personal-use are not included. Ex-vessel prices are dollars per pound. In-season figures are preliminary and subject to revision, and confidential cells are suppressed by ADF&G at source.
The seasonal modes
In season, mid-May through September, the scoreboard is live and updates through the season. Off-season there is no live harvest: the site says so and shifts to the forecast and last season's finals. The second-biggest event of the year is the April forecast drop, and the site leads with it when it lands.
What we do not say
We report what was harvested and what was forecast. We do not tell anyone where to fish, when to sell, what a permit is worth, or where prices are headed. That is the reader's call. This is not fishing, financial or investment advice.
New to the vocabulary? The glossary defines every term the scoreboard uses, and the methodology page spells out exactly how the harvest is read against the forecast and where the numbers come from.