Cloudy, with heavier clouds associated with showers. A very minor break or two allowed a touch of sun through. Temperatures in the 40s.
I was invited to be a naturalist on the WhaleFest cruise this morning, so headed down to the harbor shortly after 8am.
Conditions weren’t great for getting out on the sound. After a short trip out to Eastern Channel, we turned around and headed through the channel. Fortunately there were several whales active in relatively calm waters inside of Middle Island. That’s where we spent much of the trip.
[Update: At the end of the month I learned that one of the whales I saw and photographed this trip was the same as one I had seen in early October in Krestof Sound. I had submitted a photo to HappyWhale, and was surprised when I received the identification report back. First at how long it took (turns out mine initial observation was only the second report of this whale), and then when I noticed a subsequent observation from this day of the cruise. Reviewing my photos, I saw I had also photographed it while on the cruise. Marks on the tail flukes shown in each of the two photos above are a good match.]
This afternoon I went to two of the WhaleFest talks.
The one on salmon brought up a question for me. I know that salmon stray, and that’s how they become established in new streams, or streams where they had previously been extirpated. I’m curious if anyone has looked into the relatedness of salmon in different streams. Are salmon more likely to stay into streams that are more similar to their natal streams? How important is proximity?
At first thought, I might expect that straying salmon are more likely to end up in streams closer to their natal stream than those further away. However, maybe if they’re reasonably close to their natal stream, they’ll most likely end up in it, so there’s lower straying to close streams, and the peak number of strays is further out. Even if that’s the case, I imagine there’s a distance between systems beyond which it becomes less likely a fish will stray from one to the other.
When I was talking to Medvejie Hatchery folks earlier this year. One of them mentioned hatchery strays seemed to concentrate at a couple of the nearby streams, much more than a third that was also nearby. He thought it was because the geology of those watersheds was more similar to that of the hatchery.
Looking back deeper in time, I wonder if it would be possible to trace the movement of salmon into Southeast Alaska post iceage. Given the likelihood that strays are continually allowing geneflow between systems in the Pacific Northwest, perhaps that would make it basically impossible to tease out the sort of relationships necessary to begin understanding what happened. On more recent timelines, I think I’ve heard about people studying salmon coming back into Glacier Bay. I’ve not heard whether they’re identifying where the pioneering salmon are coming from.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
