September 22, 2020 — Pink salmon, the most plentiful and cheapest of Alaska’s five salmon species, are finding more hospitable habitat in the warming northern Bering Sea, a new study finds.
There is a clear link between warming temperatures at Nome and better juvenile salmon productivity in rivers that flow into the northern Bering Sea, said the study, published in the journal Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography.
Pink salmon, a species more associated with waters off Alaska’s southern coast, appear to be among those boreal species working their way into more northern waters in response to climate change.
Pink salmon’s short life cycle makes their population more adaptable to these changes in environmental conditions, according to the study. Other salmon species spend up to seven years at sea before returning to freshwater to spawn, but pink salmon have a total life cycle of only two years — counting their time in both saltwater and freshwater — and that relatively quick turnaround gives more chances for succeeding generations to shift their migration patterns.
“Pink salmon are definitely good at straying,” said lead author Ed Farley of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “They definitely want to go seek out other habitat.”