North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission

Technical Report 11

Table of Contents

Community-based Monitoring Demonstrates Increasing Occurrences and Abundances of Pacific Salmon in the Canadian Arctic from 2000 to 2017

Authors:
Karen M. Dunmall, Darcy G. McNicholl, and James D. Reist

Abstract Excerpt:
Changing environmental conditions have precipitated northward distributional shifts for many marine ectotherms (Sunday et al. 2012). As salmon distributions are linked to species-specific thermal tolerances (Welch et al. 1998), warming trends have also been used to predict northward shifts in salmon species and their habitats (Welch et al. 1995; Kaeriyama 2008; Abdul-Aziz et al. 2011; Yoon et al. 2015). Indeed, Pacific salmon Oncorhynchus spp. appear to be responding to these warming trends as relatively high abundances of juvenile pink and chum salmon were caught in the Chukchi Sea in 2007 (Eisner et al. 2013), and immature chum salmon were found at higher latitudes in the Bering Sea in 2009 (Sato et al. 2012). Although Pacific salmon are not new to the Arctic (Stephenson 2006; Nielson et al. 2013), trends of increasing Pacific salmon harvests in subsistence fisheries in the Canadian Arctic are also apparent (Dunmall et al. 2013). Pacific salmon appear to be naturally accessing Arctic habitats as conditions become more favorable (Babaluk et al. 2000a; Grebmeier et al. 2006), which contributes to the perception of the Arctic as a conservation haven for salmon in a warming environment (Rand et al. 2012).

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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23849/npafctr11/87.90

Citation

Dunmall, K.M., D.G. McNicholl, and J.D. Reist.  2018.  Community-based monitoring demonstrates increasing occurrences and abundances of Pacific salmon in the Canadian Arctic from 2000 to 2017.  N. Pac. Anadr. Fish Comm. Tech. Rep. 11: 87–90.  https://doi.org/10.23849/npafctr11/87.90