Welcome to the online home of the Mark, Tag, and Age Laboratory. We provide detailed information about fishery resources to managers to help them establish harvest goals and fishing periods. We provide researchers with data to evaluate innovative ideas; and we develop new methods and techniques to help understand, maintain and safeguard Alaska's fishery resources.

The Mark Lab tracks Alaska salmon populations by deciphering thermal marks induced in fish otoliths. We have pioneered many aspects of this low-cost method of mass marking. The technology we developed has been extended to computer analysis of salmon scales as well.

The Tag Lab is the centralized state resource for tracking salmon using microscopic tags. We maintain a detailed database that is used to quantify survival of fish groups, timing of runs through commercial fisheries, compliance with Pacific Salmon Treaty strictures and various biological parameters. The Tag Lab is part of a coastwide standardized salmon measurement program which also includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia.

The Age Determination Unit is a statewide age reading service which produces data for fish and invertebrates sampled during commercial, population survey, and research harvests. Age data help fishery managers set harvest goals by assessing the ability of a species or a population to sustain harvest. This lab also works with scientists at similar labs in other states and provinces to standardize methods and improve techniques, through the Canada-US Groundfish Committee's Technical Subcommittee - Committee of Age Reading Experts.

The ASL Repository holds Alaska commercial fisheries historic salmon age-sex-length observations. The Department is actively reconstructing historic data from many physical locations as time and funding permits. Results are edited into a standard format with consistent codes. “Clean” data are archived permanently in the repository for use by researchers and managers. Visitors may extract data selected by a number of filters. Small queries may be reported directly in a browser. Query results that are voluminous may be retrieved as files readable by Excel, MS Access, and other tools. (It is possible for queries to return millions of observations, so be aware files could be much beyond Excel capacity limits.)

This site provides you access to the fisheries data in many of our databases through various online reports. You can get a good idea of what we do by surfing through this site. While you're here, please feel free to contact us to tell us how to improve our service. If you want to stop in and see us in person, our lab is located at 10107 Bentwood Place in Juneau, Alaska.

Mailing Address: State of Alaska Department of Fish and Game Mark, Tag and Age Laboratory PO Box 115526 Juneau, AK 99811-5526

Shipping Address: State of Alaska Department of Fish and Game Mark, Tag and Age Laboratory 10107 Bentwood Drive Juneau, AK 99801