Pink salmon moving north

In recent years, salmon have turned up in the Arctic Ocean at the top of Alaska.

Scientists say salmon and other marine life are responding to warmer waters and reduced ice in the Bering Sea and the Beaufort Sea.

Last summer near Nome, Alaska, fishery biologists noted a huge increase in pink salmon runs in the region’s rivers and streams: on the North River, a record 1.6 million pink salmon passed a counting station.

A survey conducted in the mid-1990s in the Barrow area counted six king salmon and 51 pink salmon. A 2003 survey there found 439 king salmon and 18,048 pink salmon.

A team of U.S. and Canadian researchers, in the March 10 edition of the journal Science, said shrinking ice and warmer air and water temperatures in the northern Bering Sea are leading to an expansion in pollock, a bottom-feeding fish used to make fish sticks, and in pink salmon, which feed on pollock.

“Local observations indicate that pink salmon are now colonizing rivers that drain into the Arctic Ocean north of Bering Strait,” the article says.

The article also says migratory gray whales are extending their Arctic stays, with listening devices at Barrow detecting the sound of whale calls during winter.