February 22, 2022 — Melting glaciers in the U.S. state of Alaska and the Canadian province of British Columbia could open up new habitat for Pacific salmon – conceivably almost equal to the length of the Mississippi River – by 2100, under one scenario of “moderate” climate change.
But, on balance, a warming climate will continue to take a negative toll on salmon populations on the U.S. Pacific coast.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
January 12, 2022 — Melting glaciers in Alaska and British Columbia could open up new stream habitat for Pacific salmon – conceivably almost equal to the length of the Mississippi River by 2100, under one scenario of “moderate” climate change.
But on balance a warming climate will continue to take its toll on salmon populations on the U.S. Pacific coast.
Researchers from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and the NMFS Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, Wash., published their findings from modeling glacier retreat in the journal Nature Communications, looking at how new salmon spawning streams might appear as ice melts, bedrock gets exposed and new streams thread over the exposed landscape.
“We predict that most of the emerging salmon habitat will occur in Alaska and the transboundary region, at the British Columbia – Alaska border, where large coastal glaciers still exist,” lead author professor Kara Pitman of Simon Fraser University says in a NMFS summary of the findings.
August 19, 2021 — The maritime fur trade, beginning in the 1700s and centered on the North Pacific Ocean, killed around one million sea otters and left the species fluttering on the verge of extinction with a global population as low as 1,000. On the west coast of Canada, the animal didn’t make it. The last sea otter was seen in the region in 1929, off Vancouver Island, British Columbia. But beginning in the 1960s, restoration efforts have turned back the clock on British Columbia’s sea otters. From an initial 89 sea otters relocated from Alaska, a population of 8,000 is now expanding in the province. Yet after generations of their absence, the surge in sea otters is stoking the resentment of some residents.
The trouble is, a sea otter consumes 25 to 30 percent of its own body weight every day. The otters’ voracious appetite can have dramatic ecological effects. It doesn’t help, either, that sea otters eat many of the same seafoods that humans in the area have long favored, such as crabs and clams, sparking conflict with shellfish fisheries and leading some to argue that the reintroduction effort has worked too well.
Now, a new study suggests that conservation efforts may have indeed overshot the mark—and the reason why is particularly interesting.
When thinking about restoring natural ecosystems, the goal for many would likely be to see a species rebound to its carrying capacity—that is, the maximum population a given habitat can support, free from human impact. So, for the sea otter, that would be to roll back the effects of colonization, the commercial fur trade, hunting, land development, and other pressures to a time when abundant sea otters may have dwelled on the coast, gorging on abalone and other shellfish. But taking that as your goal is to overlook the way Indigenous peoples extensively managed the sea otter population for thousands of years.
Led by Erin Slade, a graduate student at British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University, new research examining the sizes of mussels found along the coast challenges the assumption that late-Holocene sea otter populations would have ever been at, or even near, their carrying capacity.
March 4, 2021 — For more than a decade, Brad Hanson and other researchers have tailed the Pacific Northwest’s endangered killer whales in a hard-sided inflatable boat, leaning over the edge with a standard pool skimmer to collect clues to their diet: bits of orca poop floating on the water, or fish scales sparkling just below the surface.
Their work established years ago that the whales depend heavily on depleted runs of Chinook, the largest and fattiest of Pacific salmon species, when they forage in the summer in the inland waters between Washington state and British Columbia.
But a new paper from Hanson and others at the NOAA Fisheries Northwest Fisheries Science Center provides the first real look at what the whales eat the rest of the year, when they cruise the outer Pacific Coast — data that reaffirms the central importance of Chinook to the whales and the importance of recovering Chinook populations to save the beloved mammals.
By analyzing the DNA of orca feces as well as salmon scales and other remains after the whales have devoured the fish, the researchers demonstrated that the while the whales sometimes eat other species, including halibut, lingcod and steelhead, they depend most on Chinook. And they consumed the big salmon from a wide range of sources — from those that spawn in California’s Sacramento River all the way to the Taku River in northern British Columbia.
March 4, 2021 — The endangered Southern Resident killer whales in the waters near Washington and British Columbia have stalled in their population recovery, and, according to new research, a major factor limiting their growth is their preference for preying on Chinook salmon.
In a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, researchers present new data on environmental stressors facing the orcas and propose investment in the conservation of Chinook salmon to aid in the recovery of the population.
Killer whales are some of the most recognizable mammals in our seas with their distinct black and white markings. While they can be found in every ocean, they have broken off into small populations, creating different sub-species known as transient, offshore, and resident. The three groups are unique to one another, with different physical attributes as well as social structures and behavioral habits.
There are multiple populations of resident killer whales, but the authors of this study looked specifically at Southern Resident killer whales. These orcas mostly inhabit the waters around Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, and make up the smallest of the resident populations.
March 2, 2021 — Salmon farmers in the Discovery Islands – located in British Columbia, Canada – are asking for more time in a planned phase-out of all net-pen farming in the area in order to alleviate some of the economic impacts.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada announced on 17 December, 2020, it plans to completely phase out all net-pen salmon farming in the Discovery Islands over the next 18 months. Salmon farmers and the B.C. communities – which say they were blindsided by the decision – are asking for an extension to give them more time to prepare for the shift and to avoid the euthanization of salmon.
March 2, 2021 — A 22-page final report released on Thursday culminates two years of data collected from water, sediment and fish tissue in three transboundary watersheds that straddle the frontier. And now, Alaska and British Columbia governments say their work is done.
“Given the existence of other sampling programs planned by state, federal or provincial agencies throughout the transboundary region, there is no need to continue the joint program,” the state and province said in a joint-statement.
Congress appropriated more than $3 million for renewed stream monitoring at border stream gauges operated by the U.S. Geological Survey.
“With all the resources didn’t feel like it was necessary for multiple agencies to be collecting the same thing,” Terri Lomax, a program manager with the state Department of Conservation, told CoastAlaska.
She’s been part of the cross-border effort ever since Gov. Bill Walker signed a landmark agreement in 2015 with B.C. to set up joint water quality monitoring for a shared watershed that hosts a booming Canadian mining sector that drains into Southeast Alaska.
“We’ve developed a lot of partnerships and a lot of relationships over the last couple of years,” she said. “We didn’t have these relationships with British Columbia.”
Provincial officials say they agree that the program has run its course.
January 26, 2021 — No issue is off the table this week as more than 100 B.C. fishermen, fleet leaders, First Nations leaders and other salmon stakeholders gather for a two-day virtual round-table in a desperate bid to bring the ailing commercial fishery back from the brink.
The United Fishermen And Allied Workers’ Union (UFAWU-Unifor) and active fishermen’s associations convened the conference, Future of BC Commercial Salmon Fishing, at the request of the federal standing committee on fisheries asking for recommendations on how to revitalize commercial fishing on the west coast.
“The commercial salmon fleet is pretty well broke,” Joy Thorkelson, president of UFAWU-Unifor said. “And DFO’s outlook is as depressing this year as it has been for the past two years. Yes, we need more salmon, but that’s not the only issue.”
The issues are complex and sometimes controversial. Allocation of stocks with recreational and First Nations fisheries, and access to healthy runs are priority issues, but interwoven are challenges with policy and governance that are not meeting the economic-development needs of fishing communities, a licensing regime established in the 1990s that’s consolidated power into the hands of corporations and so-called “armchair fishermen”, and an explosion in pinniped predation rates on juvenile salmon, to name a few.
December 1, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Natural resource managers in British Columbia discovered several adult male and female European green crabs on Haida Gwaii this past July. Alarm bells immediately went off for biologists in Alaska.
The archipelago of Haida Gwaii, off the coast of Prince Rupert in British Columbia, is very close to Alaska. The July discovery is the closest confirmed finding of the invasive crustacean since it was first detected in the San Francisco Bay area in 1989.
European green crabs were first introduced to North America in the 1800s, likely hitching a ride in the ballast water of merchant ships from Europe. Experts believe the invasive crab was transported to the West Coast in ballast water as well.
The green crab is considered one of the most invasive species in the marine environment. It has few predators, aggressively hunts and eats its prey, destroys seagrass, and outcompetes local species for food and habitat. It has been documented that European green crab devour juvenile king crab as well as juvenile salmon.
Read more.
December 1, 2020 — Mark Kurlansky, the New York Times bestselling author of “Salmon”, is urging anti-fish farm activists to work with salmon farmers and boost the production of affordable and sustainable seafood from the oceans.
In an interview with SeaWestNews, Kurlansky said replacing sea farms with land-based operations, as the activists are demanding in British Columbia, is not a good idea because it will exacerbate climate change and substantially increase Greenhouse Gas (GhG) emissions.
“Land based farming greatly increases energy use and the carbon footprint…I do not think that is a good idea,” said Kurlansky, who spent five years researching his book, which was published by Patagonia, the outdoor clothing conglomerate, which ironically supports activism to stop ocean-based fish farming.
“Farming salmon in the oceans has almost no carbon footprint…almost all of the energy used, apart from packaging the food, is provided by the natural force of the ocean…so you will be taking a low energy industry and turning it into a high energy industry,” he said.
“I would certainly not want to see all fish farms move on land, and I also would not want to see all ocean fish farming stopped, because I think it has a good contribution and it is a supply of affordable protein. That is not something to turn your back on.”