It has been a long time since my last update here. Since then, I have completed my third field season in Alaska. It was a good, if rather uneventful field season this year. The previous winter’s snowfall was well below average, and the signs of this were obvious as we arrived in June. There was far less snow on the surrounding peaks, and the rivers were all running much lower than normal for that time of year. The Chignik, Black, and Alec Rivers were all at levels normally seen in late July at the beginning of June, and they continued to drop throughout the summer. Part of the reason for this was the excellent weather we had for much of the season. While Chignik in the summer is usually grey, wet and cool, we had weeks on end of sunshine and warm temperatures. It certainly didn’t feel like Alaska, and I was wishing I had packed more warm weather clothing at times.
We continued much of the same field work from the previous two summers, including maintaining the long-term data set for the Alaska Salmon Program, collecting juvenile coho salmon diets, sockeye salmon otoliths from post spawn carcasses, and Dolly varden for gut size analysis. Sampling for the long-term dataset took us from Black Lake to the Chignik Lagoon, sampling fishes on beaches with a seine deployed from a skiff, sampling water chemistry, lake productivity, and zooplankton biomass from stations in the middle of the lakes, measuring river discharge throughout the watershed, and sampling the lakes with tow nets (small, top-water trawls pulled between two boats) at night to examine the condition of sockeye salmon at the end of the growing season.
Beach seine sampling is always interesting, as the species composition of our catches changes depending on the time of year, lake, and location within the lake. You can begin to appreciate the seasonal movements and behaviors of the different species by seeing what you catch and where throughout the season. This year, we caught many more pond smelt than usual in our beach seines early in the year, but they were nearly absent in August. We also noticed that many juvenile coho were preying upon pond smelt early in the year, capitalizing on the high densities of this prey item.
Examining coho salmon diets throughout the summer provides insight not only into what the coho are eating, but also what the aquatic invertebrates and other fishes of the lakes are doing at different times of year. The composition of coho diets tracks the active and emerging insects, as well as the fish populations that are spawning or emerging from the gravel. Much of the diets we examined this year were full of chironomid pupa, though caddis adults were common for a 2-3 week period near the beginning of July. Pond smelt were commonly seen in the diets until August.
We also collected our fourth year of adult sockeye otoliths this season. This project is aiming to expand on our findings in our recent paper (Walsworth et al. 2014) in which we found that there is a wide diversity of juvenile lie-history behaviors represented in a single population of sockeye salmon that survive to spawn. In a future paper we are going to examine how the success of different behaviors changes over across seasons. Is spending more time in Black Lake better in year A, but not in year B? What are the environmental conditions that may influence such patterns? These collections are pretty fun, as the river corridors come alive when the salmon are spawning and dying. Bears are in the rivers and riparian areas, gulls take over beaches, and eagles perch in branches overhanging the rivers, waiting for a meal.
Dolly varden sampling for a gut size analysis is always a fun sampling activity, as we sample them with fly-rods. Fishing for science! We are examining the timing of gut capacity changes in response to salmon egg subsidies, and how these differ across the landscape. The Dolly fishing was excellent again this year. I often worry that the Dolly fishing is so good in Alaska that it will ruin fishing for me anywhere else. So far, that hasn’t happened, though I catch far fewer fish when I am not in Chignik.
The past three years have seen 3 very solid fishing seasons, including two of the highest sockeye harvests in the history of the fishing district. Fishermen were able to make some money and plenty of fish were allowed to escape into the rivers to produce the next generation and feed the many different predators that rely on the eggs, brains, and carcasses of the sockeye to grow and survive, including bears, gulls, eagles, Dolly varden, juvenile salmon, flies, and many others. While each of these users of the salmon resource has had access to plenty of fish in recent years, this year was forecast by both the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game and by our research group to be quite a bit more modest.
The early run of fish that spawn in Black Lake tributaries turned out to be much smaller than even the forecasts predicted, and the fishery remained closed throughout the entirety of the run. Even when the fishery eventually opened during the second run, the daily harvest numbers remained quite low. Speaking with several of the fishermen, it sounded like some were having trouble paying off their fuel bills with the low harvest, while others were still able to scratch out a decent season.
Due to how Alaska’s salmon fisheries are managed, the ecosystem users (bears, gulls, etc.) still received a similar amount of salmon resource. Alaska’s salmon fisheries are managed for escapement goals. The local manager sees how many fish have entered the river at a given point in time and determines whether they are on pace to hit their goal. If they are not on pace to hit the goal, they have the authority to close the fishery, and if they are on pace to make their goal with surplus, they can open the fishery to harvest that surplus. This type of management seeks to maintain future returns, even if it means reduced harvest within a single season.
Along with the low water and meager salmon runs, we also saw very few bears this year. Usually we can count on seeing several bears every day we are out, particularly late in the year when we go to Black Lake. This year we saw probably only 50 bears all summer, and maybe only 15 unique bears. Colleagues at the other field stations in Alaska reported similar low bear sightings. I wonder where they all were? Did they have low survival over the winter with the low snow pack and heavy rains? Were they higher in the watersheds? Were they on the coasts? I wonder if they will be back in more normal numbers next year.