Observations and Speculations on the Reasons for Recent Increases in Pink Salmon Production

• Main Author: Richard J. Beamish
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: pink salmon; Strait of Georgia; Fraser River; intercirculi spacing; growth; life history strategy; Pacific; Pink salmon; Subarctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.434.170; http://www.npafc.org/new/publications/Technical Report/TR8/Beamish.pdf

“I for one am ready to give up research for a unique cause of dominance and concentrate rather on identifying which cause or causes operate on each individual stock ” (Ricker 1962). This statement by one of the world’s foremost fisheries scientists summarizes the difficulty that researchers have understanding the biology and population dynamics of pink salmon. Made almost 50 years ago, the statement is mostly still true today. This workshop brings experts together to discuss why pink salmon throughout their distribution are either increasing in abundance or are at least not declining in abundance as are some other species of Pacific salmon. Bill Ricker’s thoughts identify the complexity of understanding the dynamics of pink salmon production. Thus, we are encouraging participants to think differently and to speculate, an exercise that is usually frowned upon by reviewers and editors. I will present information that was not published, mostly because it did not show much. However, I will speculate that what it does not show is the message. Catches of Pacific salmon throughout the subarctic Pacific have increased in the past two decades with Odd-year line historic high catches in 1995, 2007 and 2009. The percentages of pink and chum salmon in these catches is