Yukon River Summer Chum Salmon Returns Lowest Ever; Yukon Territory Closes All Chinook Fisheries

[hatrack]

A decades-long decline in salmon in the Yukon River has reached a crisis this year, forcing harvest closures and prompting emergency shipments of salmon from other regions of Alaska to river residents who are otherwise facing food shortages.

The salmon species that are staples for Indigenous communities along the Yukon River in Alaska and Canada — chum and chinook, also known as king salmon — are in dire condition, according to fishery managers. The summer chum salmon run in the Yukon River was the lowest on record and the fall return, which is just starting, is also weak, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said. In Canada’s Yukon Territory, an ultra-low return has resulted in closures of all Chinook harvests.

EDIT

The Yukon River salmon problems are longstanding. Salmon runs have declined drastically since the late 1990s. In several of those years, even subsistence fishing was severely restricted and Chinook salmon passage obligations spelled out in the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty were not met. Additionally, the fish themselves are getting smaller. The fish have shrunk over the past 60 years, according to recent research led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists, and the change is attributed to quicker maturation and less time spent in the ocean.

The list of potential culprits is long. Suspected causes include climate change, which is heating both the ocean waters where salmon spend years growing and the river headwaters where salmon are born and return to spawn, said Ben Stevens, tribal resources manager for the Tanana Chiefs Conference. Other suspected causes of the decline are commercial fishing practices at sea that may be snaring too many Yukon River salmon as incidental bycatch, mining pollution along the river and problems stemming from a dam at Whitehorse, the principal city of the Yukon Territory, Stevens said in an interview.

EDIT

https://www.arctictoday.com/dismal-yukon-river-salmon-returns-prompt-widespread-fishing-closures-emergency-aid-and-tough-questions/?wallit_nosession=1

[Sneederbunk]

1. So many canaries.