April 7, 2022 — Waist-deep in the waters of Jago Lagoon off Alaska’s North Slope, biologist Vanessa von Biela and her research partners got a big surprise in the summer of 2017 when they were sorting through Arctic fish that had been captured in a test net.  Among the hundreds of Arctic cisco in the net was a juvenile chum salmon — the first direct proof of successful salmon reproduction that far north in North America.

The young chum salmon, with its rounded nose, stood out among the masses of pointy-nosed Arctic cisco was quickly noticed by colleague Sean Burril, said von Biela, a research biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

“He happened to hold this one in his hand and he said, ‘Hey, this one feels different,’ and, ‘This one is a salmon,’” she said.

That one juvenile salmon found near the Inupiat village of Kaktovik during fieldwork to study Beaufort Sea fisheries represented a breakthrough — the product of an egg laid in the Arctic waters that survived the winter.

Read the full story at Arctic Today