Over fishing or Fukushima???

Local sport fishers won’t be able to get their early-season king salmon fix as the Juneau area will be closed for king salmon fishing from April 15 to June 14, according to a Monday emergency order from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The two-month closure comes as management biologists expect a second-straight year of record-low king salmon returns on the Taku River.

“We’ve been in a period of low productivity, not just on the Taku, but on several rivers up and down the coast,” Juneau Area Management Biologist Daniel Teske said. “Forecasts for this coming season are expected to be well below our escapement goals, so we need to limit harvest as much as possible.”

Fish and Game’s escapement goals set a guideline for the number of spawning king salmon needed to keep population numbers healthy. Currently, the lower boundary for escapement is 19,000 fish while the upper goal is 36,000.

Fish and Game forecasts 13,300 spawning king salmon this year. If that forecast bears out, it will mark just the seventh year king salmon numbers haven’t met escapement goals on the Taku since 1975.

From 1989 to 2013, an average of 42,000 king salmon a year have made it past fishermen to freshwater spawning grounds on the Taku River. A record high of 114,938 fish made it upriver in 1997, while 2016 saw a record low of 12,381.