OREANDA-NEWS Far Eastern fishermen in 2025, according to scientific forecasts, will be able to catch 312 thousand tons of Pacific salmon, which is lower than the catch of the previous few years, the decrease in catches is due to poor survival of fish in a warming climate, said Kirill Kolonchin, director of the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO).

"For 2025, VNIRO has prepared a catch forecast in the Far Eastern economic Basin at the level of 312 thousand tons, which is significantly lower than production volumes in the previous three cyclical years and close to the catch level in 2022 and 2024. The share of pink salmon will be 61%, or 189 thousand tons by weight; this is significantly lower than the catch for the previous three years and is due to a decrease in survival due to ongoing climate warming," he said at a meeting of the Far Eastern Scientific and Commercial Council, which is taking place on Friday in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

According to Kolonchin, a distinctive feature of the pink salmon catch forecast for this year was a decrease in its production volumes for the main salmon breeding areas, which include the northeastern and western coasts of Kamchatka, the East Sakhalin subzone and the mainland coast of the Sea of Okhotsk.

The decrease in the number of pink salmon approaches in 2025 confirms the result of the trawl surveys that scientists traditionally conducted in the autumn of 2024 in the Bering and Okhotsk Seas.

Kolonchin explained that of the total projected catch of Pacific salmon in 2025, traditionally the bulk will fall on the Kamchatka Territory - almost 200 thousand tons. Another 62 thousand tons are projected to be caught in the Sakhalin Region, 36 thousand tons in the Khabarovsk Territory. In the Magadan region, Chukotka and Primorsky Krai, the total catch is expected to reach 14 thousand tons.

As reported, in 2024, Far Eastern fishermen caught 235 thousand tons of Pacific salmon, in 2023 - 609 thousand tons, in 2022 - 271 thousand tons.