Pink salmon forecast anticipates middling run

Next year’s pink salmon

harvest forecast for Southeast Alaska is anticipating a run

statistically on the stronger side, though the numbers

may not be particularly optimistic for fishermen still reeling from a disappointing 2016 run.

The 2017 report predicts the coming run will fall within in the “strong” range, with a point estimate of 43 million fish and an 80-percent confidence interval.

To produce the

forecast, researchers adjusted past harvest trends using peak June-July juvenile pink salmon abundance data from 2016. Using exponential smoothing, all harvests since 1960 were factored into t...