The Trouble with Fish

Here it is, we are going into mid July and still looking at temperatures in the low 50's. It's wet and stormy again. High winds brought down a small plane landing in Beluga Lake (near the Homer Airport) late last night. A 65 year old woman, an ex-state legislator, died in the accident. She was coming to Homer for a fishing trip. Adding to the drama, a boat was grounded in rough water on the Homer Spit. It was too rough for rescue operations last night. I suppose they got to it today. We have given up any hope of summer weather for this year.

Fishing news isn't good.

The King (Chinook) Salmon season was bust, closed over most of the state. They have gone out to sea (normally for 1 to 5 years) and not come back. So what's up with that? There is a commercial fishery, personal use fishery, sport fishery, and subsistence fishery. That's a lot of fishing going on. Add habitat loss, habitat degradation and climate change as threats to the population and it seems pretty obvious, but debates rage and accusations between user groups fly. Everyone wants their "share" of the salmon and no one will do without.

Halibut are having their problems too. The smaller fish (15 - 20 lbs) being caught by sport fishing charters are showing areas of opaque, jelly-like muscle, a condition appropriately called Mushy Halibut Syndrome. Not very appetizing, though we're told it's safe to eat. There are fewer and fewer of the big halibut being caught here in the Halibut Fishing Capital of the World.

Could there be more? 

West coast Sockeyes (Red Salmon) are really in trouble, the same loss at sea that we had with the Kings this year over a much longer period of time, with 50% to 85% drop in productivity reported in the last 20 years. In Alaska, some stocks are in decline, some are OK... with the same factors threatening them as the Kings.

In all this fishy news of late I have read that climate change is driving the evolution of the Pink Salmon (Humpy), a good news/bad news story. 

Two groups of Humpies, early migrators and late migrators, were differentiated with a genetic marker by some nutty scientist in the 1970's. Through the 1980's between 27 and 39 percent of the population was identified as late migrators. By the end of that decade fish with the genetic marker, the "lates", began to disappear, quite rapidly in fact, until today it isn't possible to distinguish the late migrators at all. They have been lost. Researchers say the loss is essentially related to increasing stream temperatures (thanks to global warming); that the early migrating fish were adapted to warmer conditions in juvenile developmental stages and migration timing, and thus had an evolutionary advantage. The good news of course is their survival; the bad news is the loss of diversity in the population makes them vulnerable to further environmental changes and total extinction.