Pacific pink salmon found in Norway...
Humpy invasion
Full story: craigmedred.news
The successful Russian fish came from the Sea of Okhotsk on the western side of the Bering Sea from Alaska. Early summer spawners, they proved well suited to the White Sea, according to the International Council for Exploration of the Seas (ICES.)
These humpies have since spread as far south as England, Scotland, and Ireland, and swum through the North Sea into the Baltic Sea to invade Sweden and Finland.
A “single pink salmon egg-transfer from an odd-year population resulted in the establishment of local self-reproducing populations in the White Sea rivers of Murmansk and Archangelsk regions of Russia with the adult returns fluctuating between 60,000 to 700,000 fish during the period 1989 through 2009,” according to a white paper prepared by an ICES working group five years ago.
At that time, humpies were reported to have also established themselves in 11 rivers in northern Norway, but they were clearly not done with their colonization. The fish began showing up in streams all over Northern Europe last year.
“There was a formidable invasion in rivers all along the Norwegian coast with more than 11,000 pink salmon being caught or observed in 272 rivers,” Sandlund wrote. “Spawning was observed in many rivers along the coast. This last winter, fertilized eggs, fry with partly absorbed yolk sac, and fry in the process of smoltification, have been collected as far south as Bergen, and they have also been caught throughout northwestern Europe.”
This is not good news for Atlantic salmon which the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has on its “red list” as “vulnerable, ” a ranking between “near threatened” and “endangered.” |
