Hokkaido salmon roe prices hit a record as catch collapses

Hokkaido salmon roe prices are heading for a record autumn, as the region's chum salmon catch collapses toward its lowest total since comparable records began.

Hokkaido's fixed-net fleets opened the autumn salmon season in late August, working the coastal waters that supply nearly all of Japan's wild ikura. Early landings are running far below even last year's weak catch, and prefectural officials are publishing revised counts every two weeks through the season.

A run four decades in decline

A fish run that once arrived on schedule now arrives as a question mark.

Japan's Fisheries Agency and Hokkaido's own counts put the 2026 run at roughly 3.65 million fish, with a final catch expected near 3.05 million once the season closes in November. That is about half of 2025's haul of 5.62 million fish, which was itself a decades-low catch.

The slide has been steady rather than sudden. Hokkaido landed 29.4 million chum salmon in 2022, 19.22 million in 2023 and 15.63 million in 2024 before last year's collapse. At the 2004 peak, the prefecture's boats brought in more than 60 million fish in a single season; this year's forecast catch is roughly 6% of that figure.

Hokkaido salmon roe prices follow the fish

"Global warming's impact is significant," a Hokkaido prefectural resource official told local broadcaster UHB, pointing to warmer water that has thinned the plankton young salmon feed on before they migrate out to sea. A fisheries operator working the coast was blunter: "The juvenile fish we release aren't coming back. We've been practicing cultivation-based fishery for years, but it's still not going as hoped."

Hokkaido salmon roe wholesale prices had already risen more than 1.5 times year-on-year by late September, trade title Undercurrent News reported, as chum salmon wholesale prices at Hokkaido markets roughly doubled on the thinner catch. Buyers are bidding up supply months before the New Year gift season, when ikura is a fixture of osechi boxes.

The retail end shows the longer trend. At Ikuraya Don Itadaki, an Akashi specialty shop limited to 20 bowls a day, a regular bowl of salmon roe has climbed from ¥880 two decades ago to ¥4,280 now, a near fivefold rise. "In recent years, prices have been doubling, doubling, and doubling again," the shop's owner said.

The squeeze is not isolated to salmon. Pacific saury prices off the same coast tripled this year on thin landings, while Norwegian salmon exports set an August record, underlining how much of Japan's autumn seafood table now leans on imports.

Hokkaido's biweekly catch bulletins run through November, and nothing in them yet points to a rebound. Retailers are already warning that Hokkaido salmon roe bound for New Year tables will cost more than it ever has.