Fish & Water - Sounds Wild
Salmon Hatchery

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Alaska's Private Non-profit Hatcheries

A group of first graders is excited to see a million fingerling salmon on a field trip to the DIPAC fish hatchery in Juneau. DIPAC, also called the Macaulay Salmon Hatchery, is one of 30 private non-profit hatcheries in Alaska. The hatcheries in Southeast Alaska mostly raise chum and coho salmon, and also some Chinook; the hatcheries in Prince William Sound mostly raise sockeye and pink salmon, Cook Inlet hatcheries focus on sockeye, and Kodiak hatcheries focus on pinks.

Alaska's private nonprofit salmon hatcheries do not replace, but supplement, natural stock production. Egg to juvenile survival is low in nature, less than 20 percent, but close to 90 percent in hatcheries. Once juveniles are released to the ocean, they are subject to the same elements for survival as their naturally-spawned counterparts.

The hatchery program began in the mid-1970s, in response to dismal salmon returns, when a low of just 22 million fish were harvested. In 2015, more than 250 million salmon were harvested in Alaska - a mix of wild stocks and hatchery stocks. About 92 million of the 250 million salmon harvested were from hatchery stocks, the rest were wild. The highest salmon catch in Alaska history took place in 2013, when 283 million salmon were harvested.