North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission

Technical Report 17

Table of Contents

Reported Occurrences of Pacific Salmon in the Canadian Arctic Continue to Increase Whereas Reports of Atlantic Salmon Sightings Remain Low

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

Abstract Excerpt:
Environmental changes are affecting Pacific and Atlantic salmon production throughout their entire ranges (IUCN 2009; Grant et al. 2019). Warming water temperatures are influencing survival and abundances of salmon in freshwater habitats and are shifting optimal marine habitats northward (Abdul-Aziz et al. 2011; Yoon et al. 2015; Grant et al. 2019). Relatively high abundances of juvenile pink (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) and chum (Oncorhynchus keta) 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). Catches of larger juvenile pink salmon in a warmer Chukchi Sea suggest that the sub-Arctic marine environment may be becoming viable salmon habitat (Moss et al. 2009). Atlantic salmon may also be shifting their marine distribution northward with warming temperatures (Todd et al. 2011; Chittenden et al. 2013). In freshwater, warming temperatures may also be improving pink salmon production in rivers flowing into the northern Bering Sea (Farley et al. 2020). Further north, there has been a sharp increase in the geospatial and temporal distributions of vagrant adult Pacific salmon in the Canadian Arctic in recent years (Dunmall et al. 2013, 2018), and increases in Pacific salmon have also been observed along the Alaskan north slope (Carothers et al. 2019) and in Greenland (Nielsen et al. 2020). Vagrant Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) are occasionally harvested in subsistence fisheries in Nunavut (Bilous and Dunmall 2020) and are expected to shift northward, possibly impacting southern populations of Arctic Char (Salvelinus alpinus) due to overlaps in tolerances and habitat requirements (Reist et al. 2006; Jonsson and Jonsson 2009; Bilous and Dunmall 2020). Beyond indicating changes in production and distributions in their current ranges, Pacific and Atlantic salmon are also reminding us of the connections among our oceans.

*This is the first paragraph of an extended abstract. Download the full abstract below.

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23849/npafctr17/88.91.

Citation

Dunmall, K.M., D.G. McNicholl, E. Farley, and J.D. Reist.  2021.  Reported occurrences of Pacific Salmon in the Canadian Arctic continue to increase whereas reports of Atlantic salmon sightings remain low.  N. Pac. Anadr. Fish Comm. Tech. Rep. 17: 88–91.  https://doi.org/10.23849/npafctr17/88.91.