Revealing population-specific differences in lipid content, marine distribution, coastal food webs, and marine foraging of sub-adult Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) ...

• Main Author: Lerner, Jacob
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2024
• Subjects: Killer Whale; Killer whale
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0440418; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0440418

Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) are the largest, fattiest, and most diverse species of Pacific salmon and hold immense cultural, economic, and ecological significance. This is especially true in British Columbia (BC), Canada, where they support Indigenous communities, recreational and commercial fisheries, and endangered resident killer whale populations. Chinook spend the majority of their life in the ocean, where 99% of their growth and lipid accumulation occurs. Despite this, in BC, there are many open questions regarding their population-specific marine ecology, such as how much lipid they accumulate, their patterns of marine distribution, and, subsequently, what food webs they encounter and their role in these systems. This dissertation aims to address these questions, first by resolving differences in lipid content among ecologically significant populations of Chinook and then by using stable isotopes analysis of carbon (δ¹³C), and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) to better understand their ...