SAMANTHA M. WILSON
Tick Tock
SIGNIFICANCE
Estuaries are more than just spaces that salmon swim through. Juvenile salmon live and grow in estuaries making estuaries important stopover habitat during the critical early marine life history phase.
OVERVIEW
Salmon move through estuaries both as juveniles on their way to ocean feeding grounds and as adults before they migrate upstream. But are salmon just transiting estuaries, making a bee line for their next stop, or do estuaries provide important services for migrating salmon?
We used chemical tracers, called stable isotopes, as clocks to figure out if juvenile salmon are living in estuaries or just passing through.
The short answer is yes, salmon are living and growing in estuaries but the duration of their stay depends on what species of salmon you look at.
Chinook and pink salmon spent around one month in the estuary, while coho spent 20 days and sockeye spent less than a week.
Number of days salmon smolts spent in the Skeena River Estuary
Globe and Mail: "Ottawa underestimated B.C. LNG project’s risks to salmon habitat: study"
CBC: "Pacific NorthWest LNG assessment underestimated risks to salmon, study claims"
DeSmog: "New Research Finds Salmon Reside, Feed in Flora Bank Estuary, Site of Pacific Northwest LNG Terminal"
National Observer: "Trudeau approved west coast gas terminal based on flimsy evidence, study says"
Nature: "Canada's proposed natural-gas plant stirs more controversy"
REFERENCE
Moore, J.W., Gordon, J., Carr-Harris, C., Gottesfeld, A., Wilson, S.M., Russel, J.H. 2016. Assessing the habitat that migratory species move through: Are estuaries stopover habitats for juvenile salmon? Marine Ecol. Prog. Series 559: 201–215.