University of Washington ecologist Daniel Schindler is located at the river’s mouth located at Lake Nerka, in Southwest Alaska. The stream is roiling with fish.
“They tend to accumulate in a ball of thousands of fish over several weeks. I’m assuming that’s the time the time they’re undergoing the final stages of maturation” When asked about the group of sockeye. “They’re playing with each other and splashing about, occasionally jumping.”
Schindler has completed his 27th season of fieldwork and is studying Bristol Bay sockeye. This year’s results are in line with the amount of sockeye Bristol Bay has seen in the past decade Schindler said. This is significantly more than what was the historic average.
The unassuming hero of this story of many is climate change.
“We typically think of the warming of the climate as negative to wild animals” the scientist said. “But for the sockeye, Bristol Bay warming has been a positive thing.”
For all other species, climate change is the main culprit.
Chinook or king salmon are suffering a massive decline throughout the state, but particularly so along the Yukon River. While sockeye (also known as reds)have been having a great season throughout Bristol Bay, and everywhere. Scientists aren’t sure the reason why one species of salmon is doing well, and the other one is struggling However, certain clues are beginning to come to the forefront.
The main difference, Schindler said, is the kind of river habitat each species requires.
Sockeye utilize lakes as their nurseries. Since the 1980s, the lakes have been warming up significantly. The warmer water stimulates plankton multiply more often, and the young sockeye feed on plankton. In the past fifty years, Schindler said, a majority of sockeye spent 2 years at Lake Nerka before heading out to the sea.
“And these days, they are growing to the point that nearly all of them are gone after just one year of freshwater. This is an indication of how freshwater systems are becoming more efficient,” he said.
watershed. (University of Washington)
The science is more hazy regarding what happens in the ocean but Schindler stated that northern regions of the ocean’s coast are particularly good to catch Alaska sockeye. There’s certainly plenty of food to eat for them. Their predators appear to be somewhere else.
“So the Nushagak and the Igushik and in fact, even the Kuskokwim River which has was never awash with sockeye, all of those populations have increased in the past decade,” he said.
The chinook don’t have it easy. The ocean has changed and rivers haven’t been kind to the kings particularly those who come who hail from Alaska’s longest river, the Yukon.
“It’s sort of an ideal storm of bad events happening to those specific chinook stocks,” said Katie Howard an official fisheries scientist from the state.
Her research has shown Yukon Chinook that spawn during an ebb and flow year have less young. The temperatures of the Yukon can reach at least 68 degrees.
“When temperatures in the water get this high, they stop,” they shut down,” she explained. “They’re an aquatic fish with cold temperatures. They aren’t able to handle those temperatures well.”
The stress of heat is only one aspect. A heavy rain could wash eggs away off the ground where female chinooks place the eggs. The parasite leaves Yukon Chinook stricken with “pus pockets,”” Howard said. There’s evidence to suggest that female chinooks might not be getting enough thiamine in their diets from the ocean, which could cause issues with their eggs’ development.
All of these could be caused by climate change and kings are in particular danger.
“Kings generally spawn on massive rivers. These are where the biggest population of kings exist,” said Erik Shoen an expert in fisheries from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The Yukon is a good example. It offers a variety of weather conditions on its 1,982 miles. However, each fish that spawns there must pass through the lower part of the river.
“So should you be concerned that the lower main stem isn’t favorable,” he said, “or when the Bering Sea is going through a heatwave, and they’re forced to swim to the main stem, with less fuel in their tanks than they’ll need to cover the distance of 1,000 miles or more -they’re going to be in danger.”
As a comparison the sockeye population in Bristol Bay thrive in the ocean, and they have a variety of shorter rivers to climb, and more cool places to relax in.
The Kuskokwim is, just like the Yukon is a large river suffering a year-long collapse of Chinook. The Chum Salmon are suffering. However, it is more of the sockeye coming back to it than at any time in history.
The peak of the Kuskokwim run “there is a range of 10,000 to 40,000 sockeye salmon crossing the sonar in a single entire day” stated Kevin Whitworth who is the executive director of Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. “That’s an enormous amount in protein.”
The organization is encouraging fishermen of subsistence to use dipnets to catch Sockeye and avoid harming Kuskokwim’s chinook. The massive nets, which can be as large as five feet widearen’t a typical method for this region.
In the course in the effort, commission for fish released the film on Facebook that featured testimonials from tribe elders.
“I didn’t think I would achieve this much by taking a dip in the Kuskokwim,” said James Nicori of Kwethluk. “Something is new to me. It’s working well.”
His brother-in-law Martin Andrew, also from Kwethluk told me that he surpassed his doubts by catching 20 sockeyes.
However, those who live in rivers such as the Kuskokwim aren’t able to switch one species of salmon for another. The reds aren’t returning to replace the lost stocks of Kuskokwim and the Yukon. Yukon or Kuskokwim.
Biologists believe that there will never be. There are two Yukons in the area. Kuskokwim and Yukon do not have the adequate sockeye habitats for fish that are comparable to the amount of salmon that would return to them.
With chinook not enough to satisfy the demand, sockeye are just too abundant to overlook.
