Inuvik (Oct 10/03) - A West Coast salmon caught in the Mackenzie River Delta last week may be an oddity or an indicator of climate change.

Michael Harrison caught this sockeye salmon in his net in the Mackenzie River. While not the first salmon caught in the river, it is the first sockeye to be reported. - Terry Halifax/NNSL photo

Michael Harrison and his buddy Paul Petrin set a net about a mile north of Twin Lake Creek last Wednesday and found a surprise in the net the next day.

"I checked it this morning about 10 a.m. and we didn't get many fish, but we caught this salmon," Harrison said, hoisting up the silver fish. Along with a small assortment of jackfish, coney and whitefish, Harrison found a salmon tangled in his net, but not a salmon he'd seen in these waters before.

"I knew it was a salmon by the mouth," he said.

He's been fishing the Mackenzie all his life and has seen some oddities such as belugas swimming in the freshwater of the Delta, but this is a first for him.

"In the Mackenzie we catch the odd king salmon, but it's kind of rare to catch them," he said.

A rare breed

Dr. Sam Stephenson, fisheries management co-ordinator for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said the catch is indeed a rare one.

He says the fish is a sockeye salmon, primarily found off the coast of British Columbia and Alaska.

"Although sockeye has been recorded in the area, it has not been recorded from the Mackenzie River," Stephenson said. "There are old records from 1965 of sockeye salmon in the general area, but not in the river."

Along with Harrison's catch in Inuvik, there were also a dozen reports of salmon caught last week in Fort McPherson, but the species hasn't been identified.

"We'll get them shipped down here, and we'll find out exactly what they are," he said.

Three years ago, the department began a program with DFO Inuvik and the Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg to study the increasing occurrence of saltwater fish in the Delta.

"It's kind of hard to tell if it's actually occurring more now, than in the past, or it's just that people know that we're interested and they're reporting it more," he said. "People do know that the appearance of salmon may be an indication of climate change."

"The appearance of salmon may be an indicator that things are changing very rapidly."

The finds and frequencies are important data, but Stephenson said the genetic make-up of the fish can provide researchers with the full story.

"Because all the genetics have been determined for most of the B.C. and Alaska stocks, we can look at individual fish and if it is a stray, we can determine which stock it came from," he said. "It may be that it's not a stray; it may be that there are some unique Northern populations."

Slave Lake salmon

Stocks of chum salmon have been recorded for many years in and around Great Slave Lake and into the Liard River system and Stephenson said they are quite sure that these are spawning fish now native to the area.

Chum or dog salmon are also found in the Peel River system, but it's not know if they are coming in from Alaska and the Yukon.

Chinook last year

"We got a chinook salmon last year from a fellow in Aklavik and that's only the second authenticated record from the Mackenzie River," Stephenson said.

Spawning salmon will use their keen sense of smell to track their way to their spawning grounds and Stephenson said it's rare for them to lose their way.

"Usually it's really accurate," he said. "Of course there are strays and that's just nature's way of colonizing new areas, so some will seemingly take a wrong turn."

If the lost fish find favourable habitat, they will likely remain and colonize that area with a new population, but DFO wants to know about it. "We're always interested in receiving samples from these fish."