Fisheries Collapse in Alaska Kenai collapse

[Steerpike]

https://craigmedred.news/2018/07/31/kenai-collapse/

Alaska’s most famous salmon river is heading into August on the cusp of an unprecedented salmon collapse.

Not since 1979, when the 49th state was still battling back from a salmon crash caused by less than stellar fisheries management and a two-decade-long, cold-water regime in the North Pacific Ocean, has the Kenai River neared the end of July with so few sockeye salmon in-river.

The sockeye failure has forced a temporary closure in the commercial fishery that looks to become permanent even as anger level rises; an early end to the popular personal-use dipnet fishery that helps tens of thousands of Alaskans fill their freezers in the name of food security; a no-harvest rule in the fading fishery for the rivers once famous Chinook, and a reduction in the sport-fish bag limit for sockeye salmon which has come fuel a good chunk of the Kenai Peninsula tourism industry.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

1. Is climate change a factor ?

If so, how much of a factor ?

[Steerpike]

2. everyone has a different explanation

From radiated habitat near fukashima, farmed salmon fry eating natural salmon fry, foreign and domestic commercial over-fishing and just plain poor management. Could be one of those things or it could be all of those things plus possible global warming is a factor.