Climate change, pink salmon, and the nexus between bottom-up and top-down forcing in the subarctic Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea
Wild salmon in the North Pacific Ocean, particularly pink salmon, have grown greatly since the mid-1970s apparently due to bottom-up effects of climate change on ocean physics and production processes. Pink salmon spend less than 2 y at sea and most stocks alternate between high and low levels of ab...
| Published in: | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
National Academy of Sciences
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4020041 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24706809 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319089111 |
| Summary: | Wild salmon in the North Pacific Ocean, particularly pink salmon, have grown greatly since the mid-1970s apparently due to bottom-up effects of climate change on ocean physics and production processes. Pink salmon spend less than 2 y at sea and most stocks alternate between high and low levels of abundance every other year. In years of high abundance, they now constitute a pelagic consumer front as they return to their spawning rivers, exert top-down control over the open ocean ecosystem by outcompeting other species for shared prey resources, and drive major ecological shifts between years of high and low abundance. Their effect on competing species must be considered in international conservation policies and when developing informed ecosystem-based management strategies. |
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