Origin of Juvenile Chum Salmon From Gulf of Alaska Coastal Waters , 2001

chum salmon, Oncorhynchus keta, in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) indicate a counter-clockwise movement pattern where the juveniles migrate along the GOA continental shelf corridor, typically north and then west, before entering offshore waters in fall and winter. Little is known, however, about many of the specific aspects of this migration such as migration rates, the abundance and distribution of specific stock-groupings along this corridor, and point of debarkation where the juveniles move from coastal to offshore waters. In the past several years, new survey and laboratory methods employed by the Auke Bay Laboratory’s (ABL) Ocean Carrying Capacity Program (OCC) in conjunction with oceanographic investigations through GLOBEC (Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics) research initiatives have overcome key data limitations encountered by previous research, thereby allowing new insight into salmon migration characteristics in the GOA. Many of the weather limitations encountered by purse seine operations in the past have been overcome by the use of rope trawls towed at the surface. Past reliance on limited recoveries of tags from salmon tagged at sea has given way to new tools that provide robust methods of identifying stocks or regional stock-groupings in mixtures of fish. Large-scale hatchery thermal mark programs recently developed at several hatcheries in North America have made it possible to study the migration, distribution, growth, and survival of these individual stocks. A broader-scale perspective of salmon migration along the GOA coastal corridor is possible