Written by: Michelle Ma | University of Washington Killer whales prefer to eat only the biggest, juiciest Chinook salmon they can find. The larger the fish, the more energy a whale can get for its meal. Each year these top ocean predators consume more than 2.5 million adult Chinook salmon along the West Coast. […]
The ocean off the West Coast is shifting from several years of unusually warm conditions, toward a cooler and more productive regime that may boost salmon returns and populations of other ocean predators, according to a new NOAA Fisheries report. The ocean off the West Coast is shifting from several years of unusually warm […]
The largest and oldest Chinook salmon — fish also known as “kings” and prized for their exceptional size — have mostly disappeared along the West Coast. That’s the main finding of a new University of Washington-led study published Feb. 27 in the journal Fish and Fisheries. The researchers analyzed nearly 40 years of data from hatchery and […]
The disastrous 2015-16 Dungeness crab season, delayed and shortened by an unprecedented bloom of toxic algae, is a bitter memory for the West Coast fishing industry. The culprit was domoic acid, a potent neurotoxin produced by marine algae and discovered in 1987 as the cause of amnesic shellfish poisoning. Scientists at UC Santa Cruz have […]