What’s behind chinook and chum salmon declines in Alaska? | Hacker News Reader

What’s behind chinook and chum salmon declines in Alaska?

fisheries.noaa.gov

48 pointsrntn63 comments

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We've seesawed between this and record-high gluts of salmon the last decades. Two years means very little.

Example sockeye glut years (I know OP is about two different species, makes the point though)

1996 https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/14/us/salmon-are-thrown-away...

2001 http://www.bluefish.org/fishermn.htm

2010 https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100903/full/news.2010.449.h...

2011 https://redoubtreporter.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/working-thr...

2012 https://www.aaas.org/record-returns-sockeye-salmon-northwest...

2015 https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/with-abundan...

2016 https://www.adn.com/fishing/article/sockeye-salmon-glut-expe...

2019 https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2010/07/record_columb...

Which is perfectly normal population dynamics.

I read that the glut of salmon might have been caused by iron seeding the local ocean. Are there any studies demonstrating a linkage?

FYI, all your links 404 except 2001 and 2011 due to length. Seems like maybe you compiled them in another editor (that maybe had markdown or link support and cropped the full link text with ellipses) and then the raw copy/paste here didn't carry over the correct URL.

All the pointless wars and other conflicts should be forgotten while we together, tackle climate change.

Certain actors would rather have a larger portion of a smaller pie.

A billionaire's greatest threat is other billionaires.

A billionaire can afford an airtight castle and a decade's supply of food.

In that scenario, a billionaires greatest threat is the billions with less than them.

I'm sure environmental matters will take front and center stage during the midst of a bloody class war. Yeah right.

Other billionaires... Or the guillotine. At some point the common folks will say enough is enough if things keep going on this path.

At no point in history has war/murder been so well automated. This is truly the age of the oligarchs.

It’s still people telling people what to do at the top and huge swaths of population required to keep things running at the bottom.

If anything automation makes things less stable due to complex dependencies.

No you're right, this is why people made such a big fuss about the muslims back in the early 2000s... they used technology

The pie can grow again, but slices will remain proportional, so it makes sense to fight for a bigger long term slice even if it means shrinking the pie in the short term. E.g. America will never give back the land it captured from Mexico.

To say nothing of the land it stole from the indigenous folks.

Who stole it from other folks.

Are you claiming the Americas were populated before the (current) native Americans came over from Siberia?

No, I'm claiming that "native Americans" are not / were not a monoculture, and to imply/believe such is both naive and racist.

I can see, maybe, the argument get made that there were territorial conflicts and therefore some regions changed hands.

But that's so, so different than the role Europeans played in the wholesale genocide of indigenous folks.

Yep, so different, because obviously before Europeans arrived, no American culture ever destroyed another American culture... well, except for all the times that did happen.

You are putting words into my mouth, please don't.

Obviously there were wars and conflicts between indigenous people. Obviously some of those resulted in the destruction of a tribe, culture, or people.

But that's nothing like the genocide brought by colonizers. Scholarly estimates put pre-1492 populations in the US at about 5 million. At it's lowest point, around 1900, fewer than 250,000 indigenous people lived in the US. Across the entire continental United States, 95% of indigenous people were killed, amounting to millions of deaths.

Whatever the scale of ante colonial conflict, it just isn't comparable to the genocide that colonizers brought, and to argue that it was somehow comparable is tasteless at the very least.

250k would be the number of people living on reservations or similar. Incredibly disingenuous to not include all the people and their descendants that integrated into the dominant society.

No, 250k is the total number of people who claimed indigenous heritage in the US. Not just those living on the reservations.

Yes, there were some who probably stopped claiming indigenous heritage, but unless you have a source, the most accurate scholarly number we have for the total number of indigenous people in the US is between 230k and 250k in the years between 1900 and 1910.

Damn, you're going to hate it once they start unearthing all the mass burial sites. What are there, like 80mil dead first nations folk? this sucks

“Tackling climate change” is going to involve hugely increasing the standard of living for billions of people in the developing world while simultaneously reducing it hundreds of millions.

Politicians don’t get elected by saying, “Hey, let’s make things worse for you while we work together to help people you’ll never meet.”

Maybe if 25,000+ people die somewhere in Texas due to some kind of climate catastrophe there’s a chance that’ll be the tipping point. But I really doubt it.

This isn't true.

"Tackling climate change" without radical technology rollouts involves decreasing the standard of living for billions; or at least, preventing them from entering the current carbon-intense developed world.

Nigeria, India, and Indonesia aren't going to go along with "oh, yes I know that the West got rich via high-emission carbon-based growth, but we need you to not do the same thing".

(On the other hand, reducing emissions in the developed world is already underway, for a real but limited lifestyle cost).

Pretty sure y'all are saying the same thing

They are arguing the burden of "tackling climate change" falls mainly on the developed world, I am saying it's the opposite.

We’re the ones who have the most to lose. We should have taken a small hit to avoid catastrophe. But we won’t/didn’t.

Tackling climate change does not necessarily reduce the standard of living of hundreds of millions. There certainly is a cost to tackling climate change, and the rich will certainly prefer the masses bear the cost. Over here, the major non-major party's stated policy was to more aggressively tackle climate change and for the rich to pay for it.

What country is “over here”?

Australia

https://greens.org.au/platform/climate

There is not worldwide agreement that global warming is a problem.

Russia, for example, will directly benefit from the earth warming. They will become a massive grain export economy.

In August I was in southeast Alaska right when pinks were starting their run. I caught a salmon with my bare hands right out of the water, it was amazing.

In Ketchikan's little waterways, there were so many salmon that it was mind-boggling. I grew up in the PNW so salmon is kind of a thing I was taught basically everything about from a very young age, but I don't think I ever grasped just the sheer insane quantity of salmon there.

Seeing some of the photos and hearing the stories of how the salmon cannery industry exploded and then dwindled due to overfishing made me realize just how bountiful the salmon were hundreds of years ago before all that land was stolen and colonized. It must have been incredible.

It's encouraging to see that it's being managed but there's still so much left to be done, and this article just shows that even though there's big swings, the whole ecosystem is very fragile.

There are reports that shoals were so thick that ships were unable to sail through them. There’s good reason humans spread across the earth mainly following shore lines: it was the easiest living.

I was back home in Alaska recently after a very long time (10 years, before that 15) hadn't been back much. the amount of marine mammals back in PWS is bonkers. I do know that they've been scooping up hatchery fry like crazy. I mean, hide a hatchery from a bunch of whales, right? At least that seemed to be a theory on the recent shittiness of the seine season, who knows. I haven't fished in 25 years.

Can you translate that to English?

I understood most of it and looked up the rest.

PWS - Prince William Sound, a large bay in Alaska. Bonkers - crazy, so a large amount. Fry - juvenile fish Seine - a type of net that hangs vertically in the water used to corral fish. Only allowed at certain times of year?

So fish farms feed whales, which also eat everything else, greatly reducing wild fish populations.

Yup, that's pretty much exactly it. As for our regulations, Fish and Game determines when to open a region for a specific fishery, in the example we're using, it's purse seining, as you've correctly gathered.

The decision to open or close is made based on "escapement" numbers, i.e. the estimated number of fish who have made it back up their origin river to spawn. In the case of hatcheries, that's easy to determine, but they've been using a sonar system named Bendix since the 70s or so to figure out the rivers.

there are a lot more marine mammals than there used to be. They're eating a ton of hatchery fish according to (many) anecdotal accounts. I also overheard a few Fish and Game guys putting forward that theory regarding the very bad returns during the Prince William Sound seine fishery.

I'd never seen so many otters, seals, and orcas as I had in my return trip. With a lot more predators, it's a stretch to think that could be contributing.

So while environmental contamination is never a bad bet, I'd be surprised if that's all it was.

The people who say stuff like "overfishing" in regard to Alaskan fisheries (some of the best managed in the world) have no idea what they're talking about.

Fucken English enough for ya?

In BC they've recently been dying in mass numbers before reproduction due to dry creek beds.

Is it overfishing, habitat loss, rising stress due to increased temperature and increased pollutants like tire chemicals?

Because it seems like if we solve those, they'll be in pretty good shape.

As @mediazik says, say the fucking word.

Hint: the word is "capitalism".

You prefer the random quota, divorced from reality overfishing of the soviet union then? https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-senseless-environment-c...

I prefer a regulationist regime that gives a fuck about the environment and will strictly rein in corporate power to protect it.

Fukushima

It certainly contributed, in that it led to premature shutdowns of other nuclear plants.

You are being downvoted, but radiation from the Fukushima disaster has been detected in nearly all salmon samples from Western Canada: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30844901/

According to the study, it's not enough to impact human health, but there is no comment on how it may impact the health of the salmon themselves.

> The average ingested radiation dose per kilogram of salmon from Po is estimated to be 0.88 μSv, and the average dose from Cs is estimated to be 0.0026 μSv. The annual dose from ingested salmon would be only a fraction of the worldwide average annual effective dose from exposure to natural background radiation (2,400 μSv y)

Come on.

Science is very good at detecting things. We can now detect light from galaxies a billion light years away. Don't use that awesome improved science as a cudgel for stupid policy.

It's simultaneously a blessing and a curse that absolutely minuscule quantities of radioactive isotopes are so easy to detect. More blessing than curse I think, but our ability to sense such inconsequential levels of radiation (combined with poor public education) is responsible for a lot of hysteria.

A reminder that the Supreme Court is hearing a case on wetlands & could decide to vastly rollback the Fed's reasonably longstanding regulatory capability over watershed & wetlands (because of course this court would). Current division of power is that states have right to regulate land usage, but feds have regulatory power over water & wetland, but Supreme Court could disrupt this capability. Whether a state lile Alaska or Washington would potentially be more regulatory is an interesting question.

There's another somewhat adjacent submission on water regulation that seems worth noting (headsup, I know nothing about the repytation/biases of the Alaska Republic newspaper),

Rewrite of federal fisheries law navigates rough partisan waters

https://alaskapublic.org/2022/10/04/rewrite-of-federal-fishe... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33145996

Of course, water regulation might not be enough, if the whole ecosystems here are being tromped on by climate change. Maybe maybe maybe we can change out find some new nutrient supply for the fish if their normal food sources can survive, but whether it's that or any of a dozen other problemstic factors doing the bulk of the harm: no one knows.

I don’t thing the current Supreme Court is going to rollback federal regulatory capability of streams and rivers (which is where the fish actually are). The current case in questions, and the legal issue involved revolves around the question whether the federal law granting the federal government ability to regulate “waters of the United States” was also meant to enable the executive to regulate wetlands that are not actually connected to any navigable waters. In any case, even if Supreme Court reinterprets the existing law more narrowly than the federal executive had, the federal legislative will still be able to pass new legislation to grant the executive all these capabilities right back. This case is better thought of in terms of limiting the ability of administrative state to promulgate new, substantial laws, rather than the ability to regulate the waters or wetlands themselves.

Have you met the current supreme court? I'd say there's nothing off the table for them.

Here in the Southeastern United States, we have the world's largest biodiversity of freshwater fish and a vast amount of wetlands and unpolluted fresh water systems.

The region has been growing economically and companies like 3M have poisoned a major river with industrial pollution. Corporations like HP, Oracle, and other SV giants have moved to the South due to lower taxes, cost of living, fewer regulations, and looser labor laws.

Better environmental regulation is necessary to protect our lands and waters, all across the country and even the planet. Water is far more vital than money, and arable land feeds the world.

If the whole world is developing, environmental protections have to evolve alongside it. Big business will always push at the limit, and even sometimes cross the line with the consequence being a large fine and firing a few scapegoats.

It really is a struggle between the will of the people and corporate greed at its core. Short-term profits vs long-term survival of the human race. Declining fish populations upset ecosystems, communities, and food supply. These large entities are more focused on driving quarter-over-quarter revenue growth.

If you look at what's happening in Guam, it is has even become a matter of national security recognized by the military. Issues like these, as mentioned here elsewhere, are more important than saber rattling with China. These things get set on the backburner if fear and greed push us into another global war.

> It really is a struggle between the will of the people and corporate greed at its core.

I always find it weird that people try to put these two things against each other when they are often one and the same. Nobody makes people in Alabama buy Ford F-150s, and people in California complain about high gas prices. New Yorkers want their iPhones shipped to their door from China overnight, and midwesterners want to go to the mountains and coasts quickly.

How corporations conduct themselves is similar to how governments conduct themselves. They’re beholding to the will of the people. The people demand their trucks and TVs and cheap steaks. Focusing on the services providing the goods and not those demanding said goods is a losing endeavor with respect to the environment. It’s not the greed of the corporations. It’s the greed of the people.

Corporations aren't democracies, they are government-regulated entities designed to turn a profit. Historically, working people have fought and even died en masse against corporate power in order secure the basic rights that we take for granted today.

If you can't see the struggle of power between working people, their communities, and their environments with corporate greed, I suggest reading up on the history of labor struggles or major criminal suits surrounding environmental regulation.

I used to work in marketing, corporations tell people what they want and they are very effective at it. If you think people are greedy for wanting things like a home they can afford or to not have their farmland and groundwater poisoned by fracking, then there is a serious disconnect with humanity as a whole.

That is really the defining characteristic of the ideology of the wealthy ruling class, total disconnect from the needs and realities of the everyday person in exchange for a desire to seek profit. Even worse is trying to shift the blame onto the victims of said irresponsible profit-seeking behavior.

Unless you are a member of that class, defending them or their ideology won't win you any brownie points. You can succeed in business without crossing these lines, but many people want more than just success and are willing to cross all the lines.

Things like child labor, regime changes, massive global tax evasion schemes, war profiteering, and destruction of natural resources are really indefensible, no matter how you try to twist it. If the government can't prevent these things on behalf of the people, then it has failed and needs replacing. That's my last word on the matter.

People are also government-regulated and looking to turn a profit.

Historically, working people have fought and even died en masse in order secure the power of many corporations that we take for granted today.

> If you think people are greedy for wanting things like a home they can afford or to not have their farmland and groundwater poisoned by fracking, then

No I don’t think that. But then when their gas and heating bills go up now because we don’t have alternative infrastructure and these same people vote to have cheap gas due to fracking… I’m not really buying “wow these companies sure are screwing everyone”. In this case they’re simply giving people what they want which is what I expect in a functioning democratic market economy. Blaming the company undermines the issue.

Look at the outrage over paper straws or when grocery stores stop handing out plastic bags. Again, nobody is making anyone buy a huge truck to drive back and forth to an office job in.

Failing to also blame people who demand these things takes away their agency and leaves us with suboptimal solutions to environmental problems that we face. You’re confusing things like labor rights with consumerism here.

  > How corporations conduct themselves is similar to how governments conduct themselves. They’re beholding to the will of the people.

sort of... i think there is a part of the blame to be put on advertising/marketing departments as well... its not 100% one-way but more of a bad feedback loop kind of thing imo

(govts/companies wanna stay in power, find something that responds from the public, push it more, public responds with increased demand, repeat ad-infinitum)

The relationship is FAR more symbiotic, bordering on parasitic, than what you've described and I'm sure you know it. The job of the company is to fulfill a need (what you've described) OR, failing that, to CREATE a need and THEN fulfill it.

The job of the company is to maximize profit, if that entails serving a need, it will do that, but it's not strictly necessary.

Often times it will also push to or past legal limits without any regard to the human cost, in this drive to maximize profit. Monopolies, child labour, environmental catastrophe, suppressing of worker rights and power.

To say that we deserve the treatment we get because we're greedy is pretty messed up. I don't know anyone who would choose to poison entire communities so we can have a cooking pan made of Teflon. Hell, Exxon put an anti knock additive (that was banned in the US) into Canadian gas for decades, knowing full well that it caused cancer.

Consumer greed doesn't account for the vast majority of the real evil done by large corporations, and I think that's a hell of a redirection of blame that the OP made.

> Consumer greed doesn't account for the vast majority of the real evil done by large corporations, and I think that's a hell of a redirection of blame that the OP made.

It depends on what you mean by "real evil" here. But the mistake that's being made here is focusing on something like worker rights suppression when those same workers are buying F-150s for their day-to-day commute. I criticize both, however. I see many here who only criticize the former. That's a problem because we can't get to a full solution and we are also taking away agency from people to make choices.

At the end of the day the responsibility always rests on the people because corporations and the government exist and operate at the behest of the people. That doesn't absolve either entity of wrongdoing, of course, but so long as people continue to demand the lifestyle we all currently live businesses will naturally continue to create and sell the demanded products. Thinking that this wouldn't or shouldn't be the case in a market economy is too ideological and doesn't help us address pragmatic needs. Will you pay $25 for a pint of blueberries, travel by bus if you want to visit California from Florida, and only own one car per household? The vast majority of Americans at least would outright reject this, yet that's the reality we must face.

In some cases corporations actually lead the way as well. Paper straws and no longer providing plastic bags are areas where corporations have taken action in spite of consumer demand for plastic straws and plastic bags. I don't know how "real evil done by large corporations" is more impactful than tens of millions of Americans demanding our current lifestyle. There is certainly gray area here, but the discussion window is far, far too close to only talking about corporations.

As the current supreme court points out, our only recourse is to vote them out of office.

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