Questions remain over counts after shift to high-tech sonar

In the continuing saga of Kenai River king salmon management during the current period of low abundance, counting the number of fish coming into the river with enough accuracy to satisfy competing users has been a difficult task for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Researchers are dealing with new, high-tech sonar counters they hope will meet the inherent challenge of finding and counting a few king salmon swimming along with thousands of sockeye salmon.

They are also faced with the task of communicating the subtleties of an increasingly complex system to a public upset by departmental missteps such as the 2012 closure of king salmon anglers and Cook Inlet setnetters due to what managers believed were dangerously low numbers of fish.

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