Posted on 03/31/2011 10:48:24 PM PDT by smokingfrog
VANCOUVER — Canadian "superfish" are making an international splash this week.
A prime specimen has landed on the cover of one of the world's most influential scientific journals, along with a study showing some of British Columbia's fabled sockeye salmon may not survive climate warming.
Peak summer water temperatures in the Fraser River are already "near lethal" for some sockeye populations, says biologist Erika Eliason, lead author of the study that is sure to raise eyebrows at the ongoing federal judicial inquiry into the troubled Fraser River fishery.
The salmon are so finely tuned to their environment they appear to undergo "cardiac collapse" when river temperatures get too high, Eliason and her colleagues from the University of B.C. and Fisheries and Oceans Canada report Friday in the journal Science.
Fraser River sockeye, which used to support a multimillion-dollar fishery, have been in decline since the early 1990s, prompting Prime Minister Stephen Harper to appoint a judge and legal team to look into the collapse. Last year the population boomed, but the fish are widely believed to be in trouble.
More than 100 genetically distinct populations of sockeye return to the Fraser to spawn each year. In recent years the scientists say between 40 and 95 per cent of some sockeye populations have died en route to their spawning grounds.
To get a better read on the situation, Eliason and her colleagues intercepted salmon on their way up the river and put them through their paces in swim tanks. They'd "crank up" the temperatures and water current in the tanks to test the fishes' swimming performance and metabolic and heart rates, says Eliason.
Then they killed the fish and examined their muscles and hearts. The 97 fish tested came from eight genetically distinct populations.
(Excerpt) Read more at theprovince.com ...
If salmon are so darn sensitive, one wonders how they ever came to survive to the modern day. Surely this isn’t the only “global warming” within memory of fishdom?
Yeah, I understand that's even worse for the fish than global warming...
So how do the sockeye in rivers far further south and much warmer... still seem to make it work?
People in the media are still trying to push this Gore-bull Warming BS? That is sooooo last decade...
Yeah, if they made it through the medieval warm period, they will make it through this.
[[Yeah, I understand that’s even worse for the fish than global warming... ]]
no no no- nothing is worse than global warming- even death by examination isn’t aqs bad- man must be punished for global warming and that’s final- the enviro nuts will not stop until they’ve taxed every last citizen to death for a naturally occuring cyclical event
Beats me. I guess there are slight differences in the 100 genetically distinct populations of fish that allow some to survive in warmer waters.
Or maybe... there’s no difference at all.
Which is why various life forms have been able to adapt to and survive thousands of climate variations over the past few million years. Natural selection.
So, as I understand it, after tissue samples are baked, flash frozen, treated with acid and liquified in a blender, there is microscopic damage to the cells, which can be directly linked to “climate change”...
True, these fish were driven extinct millions of years ago, the biologists just need to move their thermometers closer to outlets that drain in the river to help illustrate the point.
On other words, they want to cut fishing salmon and raise prices significantly.
Salmon have survived for millions of years through far warmer climates but not a half degree Centigrade increase now? LOL
ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2008) — University of British Columbia researchers have found a way to accurately predict the impact of climate change on imperiled Pacific salmon stocks that could result in better management strategies.
In 2004, unusually warm river temperatures and earlier entry into the Fraser River system contributed to the “disappearance” of 70 per cent of the Weaver Creek sockeye stock.
“In contrast, the Gates Creek sockeye stock, which have a higher thermal window, experienced few problems with the same high river temperatures that year.”
“This study shows that an increase over the past 50 years of 1.8 degrees Celsius in the Fraser River’s peak summer temperatures is too much too fast for *some* salmon stocks.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081112124416.htm
The article points out that *some* salmon travel up to 1,100 kilometres against powerful currents to spawn, while others have much easier migration routes. The salmon with the more difficult migration routes are more vulnerable to temperature changes.
Yep. Amazin stuff.
Revival of a 3 year old article. Guess they have run out of new studies.
http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/ubcreports/2008/08feb07/degrees.html
She must have got another grant.
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