This story originally appeared in Highland news and is part of the Climate counter collaboration.
Every June, Serena Fitka goes to her Yup’ik community in St. Mary’s, Alaska, near the confluence of the Yukon and Andreafsky Rivers in the southwestern part of the state. She usually helps her family fish for salmon and keep it in the smokehouse for the lean winter months. But this year that didn’t happen: this year there was no salmon to catch.
“I could feel the loss,” she said. “I didn’t know what to fill my days with, and I felt it was like that for everyone along the Yukon River.”
There are five types of salmon in Alaska: chinook, sockeye, chum, coho, and pink. Chum is the most widely harvested fish in the Yukon, but both chum and chinook are vital to the life and culture of the approximately 50 communities around Alaska that depend on the river and its tributaries for their livelihood.
Statewide, the number of chinooks has been declining for a decade, but this year is the lowest number ever recorded. Chum counts took a nosedive in 2021 and this year’s count is the second lowest ever; as a result, state and federal fisheries managers have closed the fisheries on the Yukon. This will affect more than 2,500 households in the region who depend on friends to feed their families. “That annual crop is up,” said Holly Carroll, a Yukon River subsistence fishery manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Scientists aren’t sure why chum and chinook runs were so bad in parts of western Alaska, but many theorize that ocean warming affects salmon early in their life cycles — and some local fishermen believe that commercial fishing activities in other parts of the state could also contribute.
Warmer waters have led to a decline in chinook and chum adherents in the Pacific, and those changes are hurting Yukon salmon, too. In a study by Comrade, researchers found that the fish ate things outside of their usual diet, such as jellyfish, and therefore probably didn’t have enough energy stored in their bodies to survive the winter. “That’s associated with these marine heat waves that we’ve seen in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska,” said Katie Howard, a fisheries scientist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Salmon Ocean Ecology Program. During marine heat waves, comrades eat prey that are easier to catch, but often less calorically dense. Drought in the inland spawning areas of Alaska and Canada could also contribute to lower numbers of chinook, as it lowers water levels and makes the water warmer.
Meanwhile, nearly 400 miles south in Bristol Bay, a warming climate could help salmon instead, said Jordan Head, a state biologist who works in the region. Fishermen in Bristol Bay have more than harvested 57 million sockeye this yearbreaking the record of 44 million fish in 1995. The region has seen: Over 74 million sockeye returns this season so far, the largest number in fishing history. With warmer temperatures, the lakes have been frozen for less time, and the juvenile sockeye may have grown larger and more competitive as they enter the ocean, increasing their chances of survival. But as the Bering Sea continues to warm, it too may see the same decline in salmon as the Yukon.