Increasingly, they have been scooped up by the massive Bering Sea pollock fleet, a global source of frozen fish sticks, fillets and imitation crab, and the largest fishery by volume in the U.S.

In recent years, the fleet of about 100 pollock trawlers have intercepted record numbers of salmon bound for rivers in Canada, the Pacific Northwest, Asia and Alaska. Federal laws prevent them from fishing for anything but pollock, so fishermen must throw the mostly dead and dying salmon back into the sea.

Yukon salmon count down by half: official

Officials in Alaska have cut the hours for aboriginal and subsistence fishing in half, and banned all commercial fishing for chinook salmon on the Yukon River to let the fish reach the spawning grounds, Quinn said, calling it a very conservative approach.

Nevertheless, he said, the chances of catching a chinook salmon this summer aren't looking good because the fish simply aren't there.

Quinn said biologists are surprised at the low fish count because many of these fish were spawned in 2003 when there were plenty of fish in the river. No one knows yet why so few fish are returning this year, he said.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2008/...kon-salmon.html