March 28, 2019 — After five weeks at sea, a team of 21 scientists from five countries returned Monday with some surprising findings about the mysterious lives of salmon in the Pacific Ocean, according to Laurie Weitkamp, a salmon biologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Newport, Oregon.
“It was quite an experience,” said Weitkamp, one of three chief scientists aboard the Russian research vessel Professor Kaganovsky.
The expedition was part of activities associated with the International Year of the Salmon and was meant to look at how salmon fare in the open ocean. Among the surprises that emerged from the cruise was the relatively small number of pink salmon. Pinks, the most abundant salmon in the Pacific Ocean, normally make up about half of all the salmon in the region. Yet during the expedition — which covered some 345,000 square miles — pink salmon made up only about 10 percent of the salmon caught in the researchers’ nets.
“We kept asking, ‘Where are the pinks? Why aren’t you here?’” Weitkamp recalled.