salmon | GarryRogers Nature Conservation

Increasing extremes are expected, but the prospects are sad nevertheless.

Can Chinook salmon survive global warming?

Research documents more fall and winter flooding

Staff Report

FRISCO — Threatened Chinook salmon have been able to adapt to many changes over millennia, but climate change presents a big new threat, as many rivers around Puget Sound have seen bigger fluctuations in stream flows during the past 60 years.

“There’s more flooding in late fall and winter,” said Eric Ward, an ecologist at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center. “This is happening when the eggs are in the gravel or when the juveniles are most susceptible.”

More pronounced fluctuations in flow can scour away salmon eggs and exhaust young fish, especially when lower flows force adult fish to lay eggs in more exposed areas in the center of the channel.

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“The oceans act as a “carbon sink,” absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide. Acidification occurs when amounts of carbon dioxide are dissolved into seawater, where it forms carbolic acid.

Scientists say the oceans are now 30 percent more acidic than they were at the beginning of the industrial revolution about 250 years ago.

Among the sea species most vulnerable to acidification are shellfish, because a build-up of acid in waters prevents species developing their calcium shells. Alaska’s salmon stocks are also at risk as one of the main ingredients of a salmon diet are pteropods, small shell creatures.”

Source: ecowatch.com

GR: Greenhouse gas (mainly CO2) buildup in the atmosphere has a web of consequences. The tentacles of the web are spreading quickly, too quickly for species to adapt. The human climate impact is more like a massive meteorite strike than the ice-age climate changes or the slower continental drift changes.