July 21, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
In summer 2013, the number of juvenile Alaska pollock in the Gulf of Alaska was the largest on record by far. A year later, those fish were mostly gone.
A new NOAA Fisheries study explores what happened to the pollock born in 2013, focusing on the interaction between juvenile fish and their prey. Results suggest that a diet high in low-fat food may have kept fish from gaining the weight they needed to survive over winter.
“Our results point to poor diet as a contributing factor,” said NOAA Fisheries Alaska Fisheries Science Center biologist Jesse Lamb, who led the study with colleague David Kimmel. “But there is probably not just one answer. Cannibalism and wind-driven transport to inferior habitat likely also played a role. With that combination, the 2013 year class had the deck stacked against them.”