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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 13, 2019)
B7 THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019 Tiny Micro-Chip Now In The Ear: Available! Now You See It... Now You Don’t! Tiny micro-processor • One of the smallest custom hearing aids ever made. • 48 channel digital signal processing. • Digital engineering allows 1,000’s of custom settings. • Controlled by state-of-the-art software. Photos by Alaska Fish and Game Spawning pink salmon in Anan Creek, near Wrangell, Alaska. Pink salmon numbers may threaten other species in the North Pacifi c FREE* Hearing Evaluation! By DAN JOLING Associated Press ANCHORAGE — Biological oceanogra- pher Sonia Batten experienced her lightbulb moment on the perils of too many salmon three years ago as she prepared a talk on the most important North Pacifi c seafood you’ll never see on a plate — zooplankton. Zooplanktons nourish everything from juvenile salmon to seabirds to giant whales. But as Batten examined 15 years of data collected by instruments on container ships near the Aleutian Islands, she noticed a trend: zooplankton was abundant in even-number years and less abundant in odd-number years. Something was stripping a basic building block in the food web every other year. And just one predator fi t that profi le. “The only thing that we have in this whole area with an up and down, alternating-year pattern is pink salmon,” said Batten of Cana- da’s Marine Biological Association. Pink salmon are wildly abundant in odd-number years and less abundant in even-number years. They comprise nearly 70 percent of what’s now the largest number of salmon populating the North Pacifi c since last century. But an increasing number of marine researchers say the voracious eaters are thriv- ing at the expense of higher-value sock- eye salmon, seabirds and other species with whom their diet overlaps. In addition to the fl ourishing wild pop- ulations of pink salmon, Alaska hatcheries release 1.8 billion pink salmon fry annually. And hatcheries in Asian countries contribute an additional 3 billion-plus fi sh. “We’re putting too many mouths to com- pete with the wild fi sh out there,” says Nancy Hillstrand, owner of a fi sh processing com- pany near Homer, Alaska, who has been lob- bying Alaska wildlife authorities to reduce hatchery output. A 2018 study estimated 665 million adult salmon in the North Pacifi c. Pink salmon dominated at 67%, followed by chums at 20% and sockeye at 13%. Salmon abun- dance since the late 1970s has been enhanced by favorable ocean conditions but hatcher- ies account for 15% of the pinks, 60% of the chums and 4% of the sockeyes. State regulators say they have no evidence that the ocean has reached its carrying capac- ity for hatchery fi sh, which rewarded Alaska commercial fi shermen with sales averaging $120 million for 2012 through 2017. They are loath to seek a reduction in hatchery out- put because of the economic, societal and cultural value of the fi sh. “The program has been successful and continues to provide benefi t to Alaskans,” said Bill Templin, chief fi sheries scientist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. But scientists who don’t have a connec- tion to the department take a different view. Alan Springer, professor emeritus at the Marine Science Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, sees detrimental effects in seabirds whose diets overlap with pink salmon. “There’s a fi nite amount of what they eat out there,” he said. Springer co-wrote a 2014 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that noted reproduction of tufted puffi ns and kittiwakes nosedives in years of pink salmon abundance. A 2018 paper in the same journal linked Spaces are Limited Call Today for your 5 Days Only! Mon, Tues, Wed, Thur & Fri Pink salmon fry. years of abundant pink salmon with mass mortalities of short-tailed shearwaters. “We looked for other potential driv- ers in the environment,” Springer said. “We couldn’t fi nd any.” Greg Ruggerone, president of Natural Resources Consultants in Seattle, began ana- lyzing pink salmon interactions with sock- eye salmon in 2009 when the sockeye popu- lation collapsed in British Columbia’s Fraser River. Sockeye returns fell when pink salmon were abundant, he said, and the sockeye were 1 pound (0.45 kilograms) smaller in those years. The results, Ruggerone said, suggest “there is this link between sockeye salmon and pink salmon related to competition for food.” A University of Washington study pub- lished in Nature Ecology & Evolution con- cluded that climate warming is creating favorable conditions for sockeye leaving in freshwater for Alaska’s Bristol Bay, allowing them to grow faster in lakes and leave for the ocean after one year instead of two, said lead author Timothy Cline. However, competition from wild and hatchery salmon — both pinks and chums released by Japan — delayed sockeye mat- uration and kept them in saltwater an extra year. “There’s pretty consistent evidence com- ing out in the last decade that we are at or near that carrying capacity and it’s starting to have impacts on growth and survival of salmon all over,” he said. The state of Alaska is nearing the end of a 12-year study looking at the proportions of hatchery fi sh that swim into streams, said Templin, chief fi sheries scientist. The state is not studying whether hatch- ery pink salmon are thriving at the expense of sockeye, Chinook salmon, seabirds or other ocean residents, he said, noting that correla- tions do not indicate causes. Changing ocean conditions may affect various species differently and make one of them better able to survive, Templin said. He’s not ready to recommend a reduction in hatchery output because of the economic, societal and cultural value of hatchery fi sh. Ruggerone would like to see rigorous debate on the pros and cons of releasing bil- lions of hatchery salmon, especially pinks. “There’s really no other species in the ocean that we are aware of that we have data that can explain these biennial patterns that we see,” he said. If it’s not pink salmon causing problems in other species, Springer said, state scientists should suggest what is. “We’re not making this stuff up,” he added. Mention Code: 19AugMicro Miracle-Ear Center Miracle- Ear Center Youngs Bay Plaza 173 S. 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