Nature's Baffling Changes

"It's totally out of everyone's wheelhouse."
"I had calls -- 'Really? The reds aren't running? Are you sure the sonar is even working'?"
"It was very unexpected for the general public."
"They [smolt; young salmon] would have hit some very warm ocean water right in a critical life stage. They out-migrated into a marine environment [that[ wasn't really conducive to sockeye development and survival."
Stormy Haught, biologist, Prince William Sound, Copper River areas

"It's just like everybody is in total shock."
"Nobody can afford to buy gas on their four-wheelers. It's going to be a hard winter for a lot of people."
Elliot Lind, 70, commercial fisherman, Aleut fishing village, Chignik

"Some researchers are pointing toward warmer water, but it kind of depends on which populations we're talking about and where they are."
Bill Templin, Alaska chief scientist, commercial salmon fisheries

"That's what we're seeing, massive changes in all kinds of things."
"It's not going to be one thing only, it's going to be a combination of insults that cause these problems."
Kathi Lefebvre, research biologist, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Seattle

Nick Hall/Getty Images

A mass of warm ocean water known as "the Blob" came out of Mexico and began to raise temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska in 2014. Since then, algae blooms have spread north, the result of which toxins they emitted have poisoned the areas where birds and mammals have been exposed to the deadly toxins. From 2014 through to 2017, a large seabird die-off occurred across Alaska. There were reports of paralytic shellfish poisoning and mysterious whale perishings.

A great number of problems not only toxic algae growth can accompany ocean temperatures that are unaccustomedly warmer, leading to starvation, increased susceptibility to disease, as well as reproductive problems. Higher oceanic temperatures have the potential to harm plankton, the main meal of salmon. But the absence of red salmon in this fishing season remains a puzzle to scientists who are left to hypothesize the reason for their diminished return in Alaskan waters.

Climate change and pollution are always the quickest, easiest answers, but they may not accurately describe the whole reason for the startling absence of red salmon from Alaska rivers where once they were so abundant they fell in wholesale numbers into fishermen's nets. Expected to return as usual to the rivers where they spawn after feeding in the open sea, they have failed to materialize. The absence follows a pattern that king salmon initiated.

These are large, muscular fish held in great esteem for their mild flavour and flesh that is oil-rich and nutrient-dense. In the last decade their numbers have diminished hugely, leading the large community of natives, Alaskan residents in general, commercial fisheries and the restaurant trade to depend more heavily on the usually abundant red salmon and other locally caught fish.

The red salmon with its raspberry-bright colour and slightly salty flavour exemplify high summer in Alaska. Everyone catches them, smokes them, freezes them, barbecues them, brines them in sugar and salt, and alder-smokes them. Restaurants depend on them for a bustling summer business. They are vital to the state's economy. Freezers in cities and rural villages are crammed with them; plentiful, inexpensive and readily caught even by rank amateurs.

They were, that is.

This summer when late July rolled around, marking the end of the red-salmon season, an estimated half of last year's total had arrived. The glacier-fed fishing ground of the Copper River experienced its leanest red-salmon run in 38 years, along with other rivers across the state. River after river was closed to fishing in July by state wildlife managers to ensure that enough salmon would be left to reach their spawning grounds.

Scientists remain cautious about the causes, suspecting that warmer ocean temperatures resulted in this phenomenon. One area only, Bristol Bay, noted as the world's largest wild red-salmon fishery in south-west Alaska, saw no difference in the number of their catch this year. Unfortunately for most Alaskans, most of its catch leaves  he state, shipped around the world.

Off Kodiak Island in July, commercial fishermen saw their nets full of jellyfish, just jellyfish. In the rural Aleut fishing village of Chignik there is a sombre atmosphere in view of its fishing fleet, the economic lifeblood of the village sitting idle during the red-salmon fishing season. Townspeople who ordinarily smoke and freeze fish vital to their winter diet, now face the necessity of buying costly groceries. Food aid may have to be shipped in to help the town get over the winter months.

Over the last century, scientists well know the opposition that all varieties of salmon in the Pacific Northwest face, through the proliferation on the rivers of dams, deforestation, warming water and pollution. Chief scientist Bill Templin feels that it is not the rivers that are somehow at fault, that whatever has impeded the red-salmon return happened in the ocean itself.

Warmth appears to have persisted in the Bering Sea, home to some of the world's largest fisheries, even while water off much of the Alaskan coast has cooled this year.

Melody Miller (left) disentangles a salmon she just netted on Kenai’s north beach with the help of her daughter Manuia Tufi on Thursday, July 26, 2018 in Kenai, Alaska. The two had recently after arrived from Anchorage and had caught the day’s first fish. Miller said this is her seventh year of dipnetting in Kenai. On Thursday afternoon, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the fishery will close two days early, at 12:01 a.m on Monday. (Ben Boettger/Peninsula Clarion)