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The salmon populations has been dropping for a century and have reached critical levels in the last few decades. This is not a recent phenomemon. There are many
by perrygeo 4y ago
The salmon populations has been dropping for a century and have reached critical levels in the last few decades. This is not a recent phenomemon. There are many causes and they are understood quite well: dams block spawning habitat, water temperature increases, food web collapse, overfishing, habitat destruction, and algae blooms from pollution are all extensively documented in the literature. Where do you get the idea that scientists are flummoxed by this?
- jablala 4y agoSo we're going to fix/build infra so we can get their population levels higher... Just so we can eat them. What a sad world.
- jhauris 4y agoNot just us. Both terrestrial and ocean ecosystems depend on salmon.
- the_doctah 4y agoIs there a word for species-centrism? Ah, there is. [1] My point being, this is probably more about food for wildlife than humans. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocentrism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocentrism
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoAren't people eating a lot more salmon now? I imagine that has something to do with there being less salmon...
- pvaldes 4y agoYes and not. Most of it is cultured salmon. Cultured and wild are linked so in part we could say that "there is less wild salmon because people eat more domestic salmon". Is complicated.
- ROTMetro 4y agoThey aren't understood well though, are they? I mean they JUST discovered the HUGE impact that tire wear runoff from roads causes to fish: https://www.science.org/content/article/common-tire-chemical-implicated-mysterious-deaths-risk-salmon#:~:text=Online%20today%20in%20Science%2C%20researchers,coho%20salmon%20in%20the%20lab https://www.science.org/content/article/common-tire-chemical....
- coryrc 4y agoHow much are each of those contributing? They don't know. They can't make any predictions about what effect changes will have. The link between temperature and fish numbers didn't pan out a few years ago here in the PNW when water temperatures were higher but we had a boom year in salmon numbers. If it's really serious let's get the gill nets out of the rivers and let the numbers rebound. But that's never on the table; just taxpayer's billions for destruction of carbon-free electricity.