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MACKENZIE DELTA
This fall, there have been more salmon harvested farther down the Mackenzie River than any time in recent memory, say residents along the Mackenzie Delta.

Chum salmon – similar to these caught this year in the Norman Wells area – have been running on the Makcenzie River in the fall for many years. However this year’s unprecedented number of salmon have researchers and community members wondering where they all came from. - photo courtesy of Keith Hickling

“Years ago. Once in a while there’s lots, sometimes there’s hardly anything. This year there’s lots, but before it wasn’t like that,” said Wilfred Jackson, a fisherman in Fort Good Hope. “Everybody is catching salmon now.”

University of Manitoba student Karen Dunmall began a PhD project about salmon on the Mackenzie River this summer – just in time to witness the impressive run of salmon and collect a large sample for her tests.

Dunmall was not expecting the large numbers of salmon this year. In fact, she said when she initially contacted Beaufort Delta communities to ask people to participate in the project and turn in any salmon they harvested this year, “the most common response that I got was 'that sounds like a nice project but there are no salmon around,'” she said. “And so, people were surprised at how many there were this year and it was good timing for this project to start up and the salmon to arrive all at the same time."

As far as why there are so many salmon in the river this year, Dunmall says it is likely an effect of global warming creating more spawning areas for the fish. Adult salmon lay their eggs in sandy areas of a riverbed; if the river freezes to the bottom, the eggs die.

"That's kind of the big question. Of course, we think it's related to climate change,” said Dunmall. “That would be a logical explanation. How it is related to climate change, though, is one of the things we're trying to get at. It could also be that the fish are lost from other rivers where they're supposed to be going.”

The research project will be taking place likely for at least four years, though Dunmall believes that if there continues to be large numbers of salmon running the Mackenzie River every fall, scientists will be studying why this is happening and the effects on local ecosystems and communities for many years to come.

For now, Dunmall is hoping to begin publishing results from her study within the next year to start answering some of the many questions surrounding this previously unknown population of fish.

"I mean, we don't even know the basic biology of the salmon in the Mackenzie,” said Dunmall, adding that one of her goals is to figure out how big and how old the salmon harvested this year are, and if they’re similar to the salmon found off of the Alaskan coast, or if they’re unique.

“We don't even know really if they've found other spawning locations in the Mackenzie. So there are lots of unanswered questions," she said.

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