The discovery of a chum run in the Colville River watershed supports the theory that salmon stocks are shifting north as climate change makes their southern habitats too warm.
Peter Westley of the University of Alaska Fairbanks holds two chum salmon at the Anaktuvik River on Sept. 22. Westley, an associate professor at UAF’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, led a team that found about 100 of the spawning fish last month on the North Slope. The discovery backs up the hyphothesis that climate change is causing salmon to shift their range north.
But the discovery of so many spawning chum in the Colville tributaries was gratifying and supports scientists’ hypothesis that salmon are shifting their range north as climate change warms their more southern habitat, he said. Yet to be determined, he said, is the success of the chum spawning that his team found. The question is whether the salmon found on the North Slope are occasional strays or part of a more permanent change, he said: “Are they now a fixture in the ecology, or some years they’re there and some years they’re not?”The team is doing follow-up work to track the results.
The body of a female chum salmon found on the North Slope, seen on Sept. 22, still has some eggs inside. About 100 chum spawning chum salmon were found in two North Slope rivers by a University of Alaska Fairbanks team. One North Slope resident who participated in the workshop, Robert Thompson of Kaktovik, confirmed the growing presence of salmon on the North Slope.
The emergence of salmon on the North Slope is similar to another change in the waters where local people harvest whitefish, Thompson said. “We’ve got a species that’s moving in, the saffron cod,” he said.
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