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Date Posted: 07:21:55 02/22/13 Fri
Author: Don Johnson
Subject: Alaska's Missing King Salmon

Alaska's Missing King Salmon

Many people are asking where our once great populations of king salmon have gone. Few people have any idea of what happened to these great salmon runs but
if you ask the Alaska Department of Fish & Game they will announce a new catch-all term called (Lack Of King Salmon Abundance). This term is offered in an attempt to
convince the public that there isn't a known cause for the missing salmon. Well there is a known cause but along with identifying the problem you need to also locate the
possible causes of the problem. Our ADF&G has identified a (Lack Of King Abundance) problem but are unable to locate the possible causes of that problem.
It is the purpose of this research to list possible reasons Alaska is currently seeing fewer and smaller king salmon, silver salmon and halibut today than observed historically.

This research into the king abundance issue begins with the practical question of (why the dramatic difference between king and sockeye salmon abundance in Cook Inlet).
Cook Inlet annually has a great abundance of sockeye salmon along with a low abundance of king salmon. Since these salmon migrate side-by-side there is the implied
reasonable assumption that our king salmon problem is not happening while kings and sockeyes migrate together. Commercial and sport fisheries are significantly impacting
our king salmon but these fisheries have been operating for many years and we have not seen these kind of dramatic king salmon decreases while these Cook Inlet
fisheries have been fishing. Because of the Cook Inlet abundance of sockeye's and its lack of kings, this problem appears to be happening while these salmon are apart in the ocean.
Because we have not seen this kind of king reduction in the past thirty years, the problem appears to be pointing towards (something) happening outside our standard Cook Inlet fisheries.
Because king and sockeye salmon eat different foods in the ocean, this king salmon problem appears to be directing our attentions towards the ocean food chain.

To explore this possible salmon food chain problem, the differences between king and sockeye salmon must be investigate. King and sockeye salmon have a lot
of things in common when it comes to how they live and feed. To find the differences you need to investigate what these salmon eat. King and sockeye salmon both
begin feeding on much the same things. Kings and sockeyes begin their lives by feeding on plankton, zooplankton and euphausiids (krill) or crab larvae.
But once a king salmon reaches around a 40 cm length, things start to change as kings begin to consume things which feed on plankton, zooplankton and euphausiids.
Adult kings salmons diets switch to things like herring, capelin (small fish), sand lances, pollock and lanterfish. Sockeye however continue feeding mainly on plankton,
zooplankton and euphausiids as kings are making this feeding shift to on herring, capelin and sand lances. It is this king salmon dietary leap which allows kings to then
grow to their much greater size. It is this king feeding leap to herring, capelin and sand lances, which becomes the focus of this investigation. This dietary leap makes kings
extremely dependant on the oceans production of herring, capelin and sand lances. 95% of a sockeye salmon's diet focuses on euphausiids, while up to 70% of an adult
king salmons diet switches over to small fish and sand lances. This dramatic difference in diet between adult king and sockeye salmon demands closer examination.
That examination needs to focus on the ocean production of herring, capelin and sand lances.
NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS F/NWC-91, Salmon Stomach Contents, From the Alaska Troll Logbook Program 1977-84, By Bruce L. Wing , October 1985.
Type, Quantity, And Size Of Food Of Pacific Salmon (Oncorhynchus) In The Strait Of Juan De Fuca, British Columbia, Terry D. Beachami.

THE NORTH PACIFIC CLIMATE SHIFT AND COMMERCIAL OVER-FISHING

The history of Alaska North Pacific herring, capelin and sand lance production has varied from feast to famine over time. Most of these changes or abnormal events
are the result of more than one cause. Some of these causes are related to large-scale climatic shifts, human influences and even the increase of natural predators in the ocean.
Large scale shifts in climate have been observed in the Bering Sea and eastern North Pacific Ocean. These (climate regime shifts) appear to have also happened in
1925, 1947, 1977, 1989 and 1998. A 1996 report by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), shows that the 1977
climate shift happened in concert (with human influences) to bring about the profound changes in and around the Bering Sea and North Pacific. This report refers to
a (cascade hypothesis) which claims that large scale reductions of small fish like herring and capelin, resulted from over-harvest by commercial fisheries.
This commercial fisheries over-harvest then resulted in increased levels of food available to pollock and invertebrates up to around 1970.
The North Pacific ecosystem was then changed from being dominated by herring and capelin to one dominated by pollock This was a forced commercial fishing
over-harvest ecosystem change, along with a natural climate regime shift. Together these two forces produced more pollock and fewer king salmon; thus commercial
fishing exacerbated a king salmon problem resulting from climate change, into a total king salmon disaster.

Before 1960 commercial fisheries had reduced herring and capelin stocks with excess-harvest which gave pollock and invertebrates more food, thus increasing
pollock numbers and reducing king salmon numbers. Commercial pollock fishing in Alaska was non-existent from 1947 - 1970. This was basically because pollock
populations had been commercially wiped-out previous to that. That changed as pollock populations again swelled by 1965. As soon as commercial pollock fisheries
spotted this they immediately expanded their fishing efforts from 1965 to 1970 and were catching about 2,000,000 metric tons of pollock annually until they killed
off the pollock fishery again thus causing the harvest to crash back down to around 1,000,000 metric tons annually. While this commercial pollock fishery was
catching pollock they were also accidentally catching, killing and dumping (four king salmon) as by-catch for each ton of pollock they caught. This accidental king by-catch
carries the potential of killing millions of adult kings each year. Commercial king by-catch and excess-harvest of herring and capelin then resulted in the
direct destruction of much of the North Pacific king salmon resource.
.
Commercial pollock harvest levels remained at around 1,000,000 metric tons annually until around 1998 when climate regime shift again began expanding
pollock populations, thus causing commercial pollock fishermen to again take notice. Pollock catches then went up to 1,400,000 metric tons annually until
about 2008 when commercial fisheries again wiped these pollock populations back down to the previous 1,000,000 metric ton level again. Then by 2008
commercial pollock fisheries collapsed again from all the commercial over-fishing and were never able to recover. So while these North Pacific Commercial Fisheries
did help wipe-out the North Pacific herring and capelin resources, they also in the end destroyed their own pollock fisheries.

Unfortunately this is not the end of the dramatic effects resulting from climate shift coupled with commercial over-fishing. A National Research Council (NRC) thesis states
that this commercial fisheries destruction of herring and capelin along with the North Pacific climate regime shift, then also forced Stellar sea lions, which had previously fed
on herring and capelin, to feed on the less nutritional pollock. This then began (the Stellar sea lion decline). The thesis concludes that this sea lion decline was the direct
results of the (junk-food hypothesis) which resulted from sea lions being forced to consume less nutritional pollock when they should be feeding on capelin and herring like king salmon.
This would be the same as forcing a human to only eat junk food and then wondering why they are not act like they used to. Then in 1998, a Journal Science paper came
out concluding that (the lack of Stellar sea lions) was forcing Orca whales to start feeding on sea otters, and that otter feeding then resulted in (the decline of the sea otter's) in that region.
This sea otter decline then allowed sea urchins to greatly increase because sea otters feed them and the increased urchins then resulted in the wiping out the region's kelp beds
because kelp is what urchins like to eat. So the bottom line is that climate regime shift may have started a small problem by reducing herring and capelin, which king salmon
and sea lions feed on but commercial over-fishing then exacerbate that problem into a complete disaster by over-harvesting what was left. The end result became a dramatic
reduction in the total numbers of herring, capelin, sea lions and king salmon.
The bottom line is that climate change may have started the fire involving in reducing these species but commercial over-fishing acted like throwing gasoline on that fire.


THE GULF OF ALASKA CLIMATE SHIFT AND COMMERCIAL OVER-FISHING

We are currently seeing studies on our Alaska halibut and salmon resources which are concluding that these fish weigh half of what the same age class weighed in 1988.
All of these fish depend heavily on herring as a main element within their diet. Most commercial and sport fishermen in Alaska understand that our historic stock levels
of herring have greatly declined over time. This has happened because of the combined factors of commercial over-harvest, climate change and increased predation.
How did all these negative factors combine together at the same time and seriously impact the abundance of our salmon and halibut? The story is very plain as it is published
just about everywhere you look.

Our Alaska Department of Fish & Game opened herring roe fisheries in 1976. Back then we had seven very major herring spawning areas in Southeast Alaska, and
many other smaller ones. Currently we only have two major herrring spawns areas left and the smaller ones are completely gone. Each year our ADF&G conducts
massive herring harvests which average around 20 - 30 million pounds from the Sitka Sound. We are looking at total disaster with our salmon and halibut, not to mention
all the other species which depend on this herring resource but we are still commercially over-harvesting it. Many Alaskan communities and their economies depend on the salmon
and halibut which feed on this herring but it has been greatly reduce with commercial over-harvest. With herring, salmon and halibut disasters hanging over our fisheries,
our ADF&G continues to open and over-harvest our herring resource every year. This is not conservative fisheries management.

Alaska used to have thousands of square miles of Southeast waters filled with major herring spawning areas. Now with only Sitka Sound remaining as a major herring spawning area,
we in Alaska come face to face with a tremendous lack of both salmon and halibut. Most areas which used to have swelling populations of herring now host much smaller,
severely depleted or even nonexistent populations. Alaska used to have 67 herring reduction plants going 24 hours per day, year around as our commercial fisheries could not catch
all of the herring. Alaska had thousands of people employed as they worked continuous shifts trying to process and ship out the bounty. Our bays were so over-flowing with herring
that docks and harbors were inundated with them as anyone could catch them just about anywhere. The beginning of the end of our herring happened in 1976 as Alaska's commercial
sac roe herring fishery began hammering away at our seeming endless supply of herring. Buyers from Japan were willing to purchase herring sac roe for over $2,000 per ton
as we began to watch our herring masses decrease.Commercial fishermen watched on as our herring biomass began to wither while our ADF&G biologists blank faced denied
that our herring were decreasing. The ADF&G continued claiming that the reason fishermen could not find the herring was because they had moved. Herring do not usually
move, they like to spawn in the same location year after year.

While commercial fisheries were hammering our herring, our federal government was busy figuring out new ways to protect herring predators like whales and Stellar sea lions.
The National Marine Mammal Protection Act resulted in 1972 and these predators began increasing. Our 100 humpback whale population increased dramatically
since implementation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Alaska's humpback whale population around Frederick Sound, Southeast Alaska increased to
about 400 animals by 1995, 1,000 animals by 2000 and around 1,700 humpbacks today. These 1,700 whales now eat over 4,000 tons of feed per day.
We are now seeing much larger humpback whale populations, which by the way prefers to feed on herring, and each whale can eat up to 3 tons of herring per day.
Each of these whales is like an unrestricted commercial herring fisherman who gets to fish year round, thus placing enormous demands on our remaining and dwindling herring resource.
This information refers only to one kind of whale in one location, thus revealing the possible level of plankton, krill and herring demand whales in general are placing on our
dwindling resources. These kinds of user demands make it next to impossible for a depleted stock to rebuild and that is precisely what we are seeing as our ADF&G bewilderment
increases over the fact that our herring stock refuse to rebuild, regardless as to what management action they take. With our once great herring masses now gone
and Japan not willing to pay the high prices they used to pay, aren't our herring and their sac roe worth more to us left in the water?

Our ADF&G and the Alaska Board of Fisheries are currently placing our critical herring resources in direct jeopardy with an on going and excessive commercial harvest.
Our Board of Fisheries should immediately close all commercial herring sac roe fisheries in all state waters and only allow subsistence access to these depleted stocks.
We have substantial components of our Alaskan economy at stake in this issue. Commercial and sport fisheries along with a large tourism industry depend on the predator's
which need to feed on our herring resources. Our herring resource has been allowed to dwindle away year after year while our fisheries users groups wonder why they
are seeing fewer and fewer of the fish they need to catch in order to survive. This is not a (Lack Of King Abundance Issue) it is a lack of abundance of wise fisheries managers.
We may not be able to prevent climate change from effecting our salmon and halibut resources but we can sure stop commercial fishing from making the situation even worse.
I therefore request that the Alaska Board of Fisheries immedienly take up the issue of protecting our remaining herring stocks by closing all commercial sac roe herring
fisheries until these stocks have recovered to their once historic levels.

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