The Salish Sea Marine Survival Project: Bottom-up and top-down processes

Speaker

Isobel Pearsall, Pacific Salmon Foundation, CanadaFollow

Session Title

Session Description:The Salish Sea Marine Survival Project: Bottom-up and top-down processes

Session Description

SPECIES 4: The Salish Sea Marine Survival Project: Bottom-up and top-down processes

Over the past 30‐40 years, marine survival of Chinook, coho, and steelhead populations in the Salish Sea has declined precipitously, and total abundance today remains well below 1970s‐1980s abundances. Historically, our understanding of what drives salmon and steelhead survival in saltwater has been limited. In response to this need, Long Live the Kings (U.S.) and the Pacific Salmon Foundation (Canada) developed a comprehensive transboundary approach to determine the primary factors affecting salmon and steelhead survival in the Salish Sea.

The Salish Sea Marine Survival Project (SSMSP; www.marinesurvivalproject.org) brings together multidisciplinary international expertise from over 60 U.S. and Canadian agencies, Tribes and First Nations, academia, and non-profit organizations. The project’s integrated, ecosystem‐based research framework incorporates coordinated data collection and standardization, information sharing, and international collaboration to better understand population dynamics within the Salish Sea ecosystem, improve forecasting and management, and aid recovery. The research phase of the Project is 2014‐2018; it culminates with a focus on converting research results into conclusions and management actions.

This session included presentations addressing both bottom up (environmental drivers, spatial and temporal patterns in productivity, prey availability, etc.) and top down (size selective predation, predation by piscivorous fishes and harbour seals, hatchery inputs etc.) processes, and their interactions. Talks highlighted novel approaches using geoducks to reconstruct long term patterns in primary productivity, identification of spatial “hotspots” of productivity in the northern Salish Sea, predation by harbour seals in both the Strait of Georgia and Puget Sound, as well as the impact of hatchery releases in the Salish Sea on predation and conservation of wild fish. The final talk directly addressed the interaction between both bottom up and top down processes impacting marine survival of Puget Sound Chinook salmon.

Keywords

Salmon survival, Steelhead survival, Puget Sound Chinook salmon

Conference Track

SSE11: Species and Food Webs

Conference Name

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference (2018: Seattle, Wash.)

Document Type

Event

SSEC Identifier

SSE11: Session Description

Start Date

5-4-2018 12:00 AM

End Date

5-4-2018 12:00 AM

Type of Presentation

Oral

Genre/Form

conference proceedings; presentations (communicative events)

Contributing Repository

Digital content made available by University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.

Subjects – Topical (LCSH)

Survival analysis (Biometry); Fish population--Statistical methods; Chinook salmon--Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.); Steelhead (Fish)--Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.); Coho salmon--Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.)

Geographic Coverage

Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.)

Rights

This resource is displayed for educational purposes only and may be subject to U.S. and international copyright laws. For more information about rights or obtaining copies of this resource, please contact University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9103, USA (360-650-7534; heritage.resources@wwu.edu) and refer to the collection name and identifier. Any materials cited must be attributed to the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference Records, University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.

Type

Text

Language

English

Format

application/pdf