The Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition plans to record the temperature of salmon streams across Southeast Alaska over the next two years. The project aims to collect the data to measure climate change’s affect on Alaska’s most prominent fish, leaving behind eggs, which turn into fry the next spring and eventually smolt before going out to sea. Each species has a timed lifecycle with many factors affecting future populations, stream temperatures being among them.
Dennis Reed is a fishery biologist for the Wrangell Ranger District. He said streams below 55 degrees seem to be best for most species. He said higher temps accelerate the fry-to-smolt process.
“High temperatures especially have a negative effect on egg development,” Reed said. “They develop too fast. If they develop too fast, they come out too early, they get to sea and there’s nothing to eat.”
When salmon leave streams, the escapement needs to coincide with a plankton bloom, said Reed
“So they either starve to death or they become weakened and have difficulty with predation and that can knock populations down.”
The Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition is beginning a project that will record salmon stream temperatures across Southeast, and assemble any data from groups and agencies that are already collecting it.
Angie Flickinger is the director of the Coalition. She said assembling the data under one roof will help inform management decisions and help monitor climate change’s impact on salmon habitat.
“So we’ll be coordinating a regional stream temperature monitoring network,” said Flickinger. “It is something relatively new and we’re just starting to collect this data. This is really just helping us gather a bigger data set so we can monitor and identify any trends or changes that are happening within this habitat.”
The North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative awarded the Coalition $48,000 for the project, which will last two years.
“But our hope is to make this a sustainable program,” said Flickinger. “Whether that is identifying future funding to keep it going, or once we can get this network established and get some protocols in place, to get other groups that now have the capacity to collect this data and just feed into that network. And, then it’s just really maintaining the data and information and making sure it’s available.”
The Chilkat Indian Village, Chilkoot Indian Association, Cook Inletkeeper and several other agencies and organizations have partnered with the project.
Cook Inletkeeper began a similar initiative in the area’s watershed in 2008 and collected data from 49 non-glacial salmon streams by 2013. Sue Mauger is the science director for Inletkeeper. She told KSTK via text that creating a network across Southeast will give a better understanding “if salmon are experiencing thermal stress now or will in the future.”
Forest Service Biologist Reed agrees.
“That may eventually change the way everybody does business, Fish and Game, Forest Service, State DNR,” he said. “If you don’t record that stuff, and look at that data over long periods of time, it’s really hard to tell what’s going on.”
The Watershed Coalition is currently monitoring 10 streams throughout Southeast. The funding for the current project will come to a close in 2018.
