Regional salmon weight derived from commercial catch data, Alaska, 1975-2016

This dataset utilizes commercial catch data (Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission. Commercial salmon harvest data: gross earnings and number of fish, Alaska, 1975-2016. Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity. doi:10.5063/F1T151XN) to estimate salmon weight by region, species, and year in Alaska. Regions correspond to the 13 regions used in the State of Alaska's Salmon and People (SASAP) project. These regions do not match up exactly with Alaska Department of Fish and Game regulatory regions, thus both an area and district level dataset from the original dataset were utilized in order to separate some areas into SASAP regions. Missing values in the derived dataset indicate either that there was not a commercial fishery in that region for that species/year, or that the commercial fishery data is confidential. Confidential data is especially problematic in the northern regions (Yukon, Norton Sound, Kotzebue), since there is only one processor that operates in this area during recent years, and according to ADF&G confidentiality rules, data from a year where only one processor operated in an area must be kept confidential. Included in this dataset is the derived weights file, an R Markdown document which calculates the weight data, and two lookup tables used in the aggregation process.