00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, ye don't even before we started. Can you read tell me what you were saying earlier as a version of saying something's real big oh tron, Yeah, i'd a fella tell me. He called he wished us good lucky hunting, but we're gonna be turkey hunting with him. Yes, he's excited, but he was in an earlier email not that he's excited about with us, but he's excited about turkey. No, he definitely wasn't excited about going with us because he's serious about it and he don't want to be fiddle farting with us when he's out there trying to kill his Missouri bird. So you don't we're not gonna hunt with him. We may or may not, but he might already have one, you know, down by the time we can get there, because we're coming in for day three of the season, so these guys are gonna have two days to start the season. Anyways, he was wishing his good luck, and he was saying in an email, Hey, if I can't you know, if this doesn't work out, good luck killing a Missouri gobbletron. Yeah, but I hadn't heard that. I don't like it, not to disparage, not to smirch your disparage the guy, but like, I don't like that because I just think of robots a tron to add tron on the end, Yeah, big, like AI turkey. So it's smarter than the regular turkey. Maybe that's what he's getting at, right, like like robotics, like artificial intelligence. Maybe even smarter than the average turkey. Because where I don't where I stopped especially stopped liking it because when you said, it's similar to saying something's mondo. Yeah, we could go around the room someone said to you, Dan, if they're like, hey, man, gobbol tron, would you be like, what does that mean? Or you have an idea? I would be like, what do you like? Do you mean something that's mando or something that's real? Shy, Mondo isn't even a word. We We're hanging out with a guy who runs, who's a houndsman, and he had been doing a lot of work down in Mexico on research projects. So I thought that we would see a track and he'd be like, that's a Mondo track, and I thought it was a Spanish word, So I right away like that, and I started picking up in my head everything as big as mondo. But isn't that a system for shoe sizes too? Though? Mando isn't it? Webster says, definition of mondo adverb slang extremely That's what I thought, So I thought that he was well, not that I thought he. I thought, you speaking in Spanish, And I'm like, if there's a Spanish word to means the giant freaking track, I'm on that word. So I adopted before I even really clear what he's saying. Then later I'm like, hey, man, what does mando translate to? He looks at me, like what do you mean? He goes, It's not mando, it's mango, you know, humongous. So that's what of mondo track is. Ah, you're right, So the whole time he was just saying mango. Yeah, but we like ran with it and we're like, mando is the way to go because I used toad, pig, big and big, huge, giant, great big great bigg and pigg stomper. No, yes, I wanted to touch on that. No one other quick order, but is Dirt up Smith is joining us here in dirt you. You know, more people have been writing about your your chewing tobacco problem. Do you care to have me give your uh some up of what their suggestions are? Yeah, just for other listeners struggling with addiction to one guy said there is one of everyone. Another guy came and said to us, a guy rode in to say that, in fact, you're wrong, and there is a chew that has no Oh, I saw that. Yes, it's just nicotine, right, is that what you're talking about, But it doesn't have the nicotine the part that naked dawf all off and you die. So that's a part of it. Yeah. And I have a buddy who did that. And those things they're speaking of, like AI or like technology, a thing that is just nicotine that you put in your mouth just seem you know what I mean, forget what they're called. Yeah, but I tried them. That didn't help. No, I mean, you catch your buzz, but you know old habits, you still got you nice little buzz. Yeah. Yeah, but I did see that. I think you shared that with me or someone instagrammed it to me or something, you know, Bryce and Joe, who weird this ice fishon with? Well, they chew grizzly, And so you put me in an uncomfortable situation because one day I was asking you what kind of chew do you say? And you said, I have a good job. I don't choose grizz. I chew Copenhagen. So I saw that they had griz and so no one that you had told me this, and I put a lot of faith in what you tell me. I said, oh, it's too bad you boys don't have good jobs. And it didn't go over real. Well, well, no one wants to hear the truth, you know sometimes, and then Steve pointed out to them that all, do you have a good job, you know, live out of your truck for a little bit. Yeah, well that's what someone else point out with, you can't have hecative a job. He lives in his truck. Well, you know if he lives at trailheads, if he's like a weird like when you go to the trail and there's a weird guy be there, contact or it's probably dirt. He's got a tin of cope and you know what's him saving them? Saving the rent for two and Adventures all right, before we move on to what we're here to talk about, I want to just get out. I want to find out how much dirt's gonna get out of this conversation. So name for me, if you can, the five species of Pacific salmon. Okay, that we that that that that come to the inhabit us waters, the layman's name or the common name silver chimp, sakip, pink, biggin's bigg and yet yeah, now name the one in the Atlantic. I gave you the answer when a big in salmon. No, I gave the answer after that. It was buried within the question. It was like their day when my daughter said to me, what's one thousand and two? Meaning what happens when you add one thousand and two? And I was like, you just said it? What salmon lives in the Atlantic? Is this the question you posted to me in the start? Because I'm thinking to two when you started the question. No, okay, I'm giving you the answer, what salmon lives in the Atlantic? Oh Atlantic salmon? So we got yeah, no, no, we're good. So Dan so that that's dirt myth and and then um Janie Poodles is here, and then we're all speaking to my brother Danny, who I mentioned all the time whenever fish comes up, because uh, fish biologists, fisheries what do you like to say? Fish biologists? Fisheries biologists. But but that involves a lot more than fish. Yeah, I know, I know. Um yeah, my like the current job title I'm working under is a fisheries biologist, but uma, my background is pretty as well rounded in aquatic ecology and um, I've done work with a lot of work with habitat and aquatic insects and food webs and that sort of stuff. So didn't it come up with you first? Like your first kind of work was around aquatic invertebrates. Yeah, that was kind of my path into fish. But yeah, I got really interested in them as an undergrad working on a fisher fisheries degree, and um, yeah, the first part of my career was spent entirely on aquatic insects and I'm still fascinated with them, but uh you know, yeah, now it's mostly just through the avenue with them being fish food. Yeah. If you were gonna like, what percentage of your time do you spend thinking about and talking about um issues having to do with salmon, it's most of my time, most of my professional time. And why is that? I mean, one you like, but because it's because there's an industry around it and so there's money to support it. I mean that that's that's certainly part of it. But I mean you have to do work that people care about, and you know, when you're when you're working in Alaska and I'm a freshwater biologists, I don't really you know, operate on the marine end of things. Um, you know, in terms of Alaskan freshwaters. It's just you can't overstate the importance of salmon, you know, culturally, economically, ecologically, just incredible. They define Alaska. And you'd like to fish them too? Oh I love to fish them. Yes, yeah, it's some one of my favorite things in the world. And the as Dirt pointed out so eloquently, there are um five species of salmon on the Pacific coast of the US, and all five of Colonel Alaska. Yes, yeah, run through real quick what the five Pacific salmon are with like a kind of a basic sense of like what their groove is, okay, yeah, just in terms of how they and then what's up with the Atlantic salmon? Why is there only one over there? Um, so the the five Pacific salmon um, we have the pink or the humpy salmon. Yeah, that's good too, because every salmon has two names as which is totally it's like weird that way, and they're one that has more because there are all there are different names. You know, down in the Northwest, I mean, you know, they're like Schinook salmon. They have different names. In British, Columbia, Washington, they have a million names. But so pinks and humpies within Alaska each has two that are sort of in common usage. Yeah, so pinks and humpies and um they are the smallest and most common of the salmon, and they have a sort of a that's the most common salmon numerically, Yeah, most numerically abundant of the salmon. Um. They're just everywhere when the pink salmon run. You've been seeing them in the you know, when you're around the small coastal streams, like down around the fish shack or even up in here. But yeah, when the when the humpies are in there in thick you know, and there's just thousands of them everywhere you go, and the whole place stinks like dead salmon. Yeah, they're just incredibly abundant UM, so they know they have a short life history. Every pink salmon that that that that is spawning in the creek is two years old. It was laid as an egg two years prior to that um and that's just that's set in stone pretty much. Yeah, it's yeah. So so when you have a river that has a pink salmon run that returns in odd years and a pink salmon run that returns in even years, those are two completely separate populations of pink salmon, both with their own separate population dynamics, and so one of those could plummet for whatever reason. Oh yeah, it's incredibly lopsided in some places like that. And I can't remember if it's odd or even like the Fraser ever down and down in British Columbia, in one year it gets, you know, millions and millions of pink salmon, and then the next year it gets essentially none, and it just alternates every year like that, so odd, you're even you're you know, it's gonna be good or not good. Yeah, yeah, And that's shifts depending on geography and and over long time spans, it probably shifts. You know within an area, an area might turn from a pink to it, or from an odd to an even or whatever you know. But some areas are pretty even. In some areas are more lopsided. But really two separate populations. Okay, so that's pinks and humpies. What's their Latin name? On karnis They're all on kakus. That's how you pronounce it. Wh Yeah, that's how I pronounced the least yeah and uh and hump and the humpy is is gorbushka. I think it's how it's pronounced that rushes Russian. Yes, yeah, I believe so. I believe so. Um. But but pinks are uh life history wise they um, that's with all of the Pacific them. And they are spawned in the sort of late summer or fall, and eggs incubate sort of into the winter and hatch kind of maybe late winter early spring and pink salmon uh upon hatching, and they absorbed the yolk and emerge from the gravel and they leave the river. They just migrate to freshwater. Rent if they hatch, they don't linger. They don't linger. No, And why do pinks like pinks don't run long distances? No, they're there are a lot of there as a lot of them spawned sort of inner tidal areas and low in river systems. They're just adapted using that part of the watershed. Yeah, you know, they might run a couple hundred yards. Oh yeah, yeah, you seem spawning in intertidal areas on that freshwater lens. You know, they migrate into the lower into the estuary, then drop back out as the tide ebbs and flows. Yeah, and when they come out of their egg, they're right out in the ocean. Yeah. Well, they come out of the egg and they s level little yolk attached, right, and they once that yolk is absorbed and then at that point their jaws fully developed and they start feeding sort of on their own. And by that point, yeah, those pinks are just following the current and they I think, you know, they started a time they're hatching too. Are there emergence to coincide with um sort of the spring run off, and they just kind of follow that down to the ocean. When those when the salmon's eggs are laying there, like the salmon their eggs like take a pink for instance, his eggs don't stick to the rock they're just laying like in and sheltered areas out of the current between rock. The they're actually buried. I mean, the female excavates the nast the red and the and she lays the eggs there and they're fertilized, and and then she'll ba actually bury them under gravel. Yeah, you see him digging out but I don't know this, so they really cover them up. The ones that aren't covered. She'll take a pocket and then you know, screwed up stream a little bit and dig another one and that kind of falls back on the previous pockets. She started taking a series of these pockets and lays eggs and them and then buries them as she It goes along, So march long to the next So where does when does the mail come in? As she those eggs are fertilized as she's dropping them. Really yeah, I mean you can see it, and you see them. They'll they'll sort of they'll sort of uh sandwich upside by side and they're there. You see that. They'll open their jaws and even kind of quiver a little bit, you know, and like that's the action right there. I didn't like. And he's even see the milk drifting down the current. You see a male like when you see a female laying, you see her like the way. So that's digging. You're digging. Because I was saying this here day, Like when we used to fish steelhead, you'd be staring into a place, you know, steelhead hang out. I couldn't tell they're anything there, and you catch the female flash. That flashing is the digging. She's like laying on her side. And picture like if you put your hand on the bottom and the rocks, you lifted it up, you'd create some suction, right and that would kind of pull the rocks up. That's that's what she's doing with her whole body. Okay, yeah, so I have pictured it. I didn't. I didn't of this. I had in my head my whole life here that they lay the egg down and the mail comes in somehow fertilized the sitting egg. But they need to do it in tandem. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's happened all at once. Can you real quick talk about before we get back to the other ones. Can you talk about when when you like the act of fertile when you're furt like doing artificial and salmon in salmination of salmon eggs in a bucket. Uh huh. I remember saying one time that you saw were there's like a five gallon bucket of eggs. Yeah, and someone would put in like a table spoon. Yeah, yeah, stuff shockingly potent. Yeah, tables a squirt right, like, yeah, like a squirt of seamen. Stir that bucket up with this ladle a spoon and be like that bucket is fertilize. Yeah. Yeah, this was in some uh uh, some little hatchery experience I had in my in my undergraduate days. But yeah, they would take a a bucket of salmon eggs and take a they would just squirt. I think that you would use a few males to make sure that they had you know, good viable one and a little maybe little diversity. Um, but just a little squirt of sperm from each of those fish and do a big bucket of eggs, stir it up and they're good to go, ready to roll? Yeah, Okay, march onto the next fish, um up in the size. Let's go from Like, we can't leave the humpy until we talk a little bit about like why does he get that funny shape when he comes back into Yeah, yeah, we can do that, but I was planning on coming back with some other other issues, But yeah, why not talk about why they call them humpies while they come home? It's at humpy. The humpy term refers to the big kind of pumped back that the male or male pink salmon gets during spawning, and it's crazy hook jaw yes, yes, um, And so yeah, those are secondary sexual characteristics I guess analogous to the ornamentation on a bird or something like that. And they're just demonstrating their The hump makes them look bigger and more opposing, and the hook jab makes them look rougher and tougher, and they they use that to display and for aggression, to compete for females, you know, with other males. So that's him getting tricked out, getting pimped out and ready to spond. Yeah. Do you know, like, are you familiar with the late um geneticist Stephen Jay Gould? Yes, a little. He had a point he made one time and one of his books I was reading, We're He's kind of getting that something I'm sure you deal with and talk about all the time would be that, like we don't know why things become the way they become and he was using an example like someone might look and be like, wow, bark, right, bark is brown? What's the genetic what's the selective advantage of brown bark? Like why is it brownie? What is the tree gaining from having brown on bark? And he would say, maybe what the tree is doing is that there's an advantage to having very thick bark, something structural in that, because it can resist forest fire. So the advantage of the thickness of bark um as over the years it's selected for thicker and thicker bark. It just so happens for for maybe perhaps no advantageous region reason at all, that it's obtains a certain color. But we look and ponder over the color, thinking like why is it that way, when it's just there's no reason. It's that it's like green leaves. There's nothing special about that color. It's just, yeah, the tree isn't gaining from having green leaves, or the color is a byproduct of some other but in this case it does seem like so. But in this case, like who, like maybe some other reason, like why they get a big hump and a hook jaw, or is it so? Like obviously it has to be that it has that because it's like a competitive selective. It's so many other species have you know, sort of well breeding, similar types of secondary sexual traits that come out during breeding. Um. And you know salmon lived for multiple years that those traits don't appear until you know, right right at the time spawning. Yeah. And it makes sense because it's a competitive environment. Yeah, I think, like, yeah, jockeying for favor. Yeah, exactly, and it fits with their mating structure. Yeah, I mean it makes sense and it probably takes some amount of energy to do it, oh for sure, for sure to trade off. Yeah yeah, um our fish? Is it true? Can you say generally like fisher like birds where the males do a lot more ornamentation? There flash here man's on the salmon world for why I But yeah, I think so. I think so. And parental care tends to be males and ornamentation tends to be males females in that regards, unlike birds, because the parental care among the fishes tends to be fall more in the males. Um. But in terms of ornamentation, yeah, I think so. And then with the salmon, are the males all bigger than the females. No, that's a that's I don't think so, that's a good question. I think it's the females on average, tend to be a little bigger, tend to be a little bit heavier than the males. I think. So, so when you catch a big, huge king, it could be either sex. Could be either sex. Yeah, yeah, are you cool on that? I'm cool man. I think at the top end, I can picture some big males. But on average, the females might be a little bigger. They tend to livel they tend to be a little older. On what species, just salmon in general. Yeah, well, well pinks are always coming back at two. Why shouldn't say that? Not pinks, the others. Yeah, the other one, the ones we haven't got too yet, the ones we'll get into. So what's the next one? Um, let's just moving up the So I mean you think a pink salmon is being you know, quite marine right right, because they they um spend relatively little time in freshwater. Um, and so chump salmon have sort of a similar life history and that they oh, that's a good observation. They don't spend like they have to have the fresh water, but they just don't spend any time. They're only user for breeding. Yeah, I mean as soon as that um, as soon as the fry emerges from the gravel, like they can handle saltwater right away. Um, which you know, the other salmon started to have a more bottled transformation and they yeah, they they're out of there. Yeah, so he's dead. They all die when they're two. And he could have spent eacon freshwater as a free swimming fish. Yeah. Um so yeah. Chump salmon um have a somewhat similar life history in that they go to see soon after emerging from the gravel. Um. A lot of chump salmon are also spawned sort of coastally low in the watershed. But there are, but there are some some chump salmon populations, like the Yukon River in Alaska, for example, where chump salmon move a really long way up rivers. Um. You didn't say the two names for chums, chump salmon and dog salmon would be the two. I'm sure there are others, but in those are the two that are common usage in Alaska. UM where they deviate from pink salmon is that chump salmon um will can spend multiple years rearing and freshwater. UM, I think multiple years, I'm sorry, in saltwater and saltwater, so they they leave fresh water soon after emerging UM and the typically in the spring of the year, and they can spend multiple years at sea. I think two and three years is pretty common for them. So with pinks, when you want to go to step back with pinks from it, because when pinks, like if you catch a big male or big whatever, you catch a big specimen who's like obviously bigger than the other ones, there's nothing he's not he's he's older, he went to a better place in the ocean. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of variation and sort of aggressiveness, tolerance for risk, and those sorts of things over the span of two years can result in fish of different sizes. Yeah. And and a chump can choose to stay another year. Yeah, and they that's a that's a good way to put it, because it sort of is a decision that they make UM every year when they're rearing in the ocean. Basically, they decide, while am I gonna spawn this year or am I gonna wait another year? What is that like? UM? I know we're using decision, but what does that look like? You know, it seems to be related to the foraging conditions and how rapidly they're growing. Um, and if they are when that decision window comes if they're if they're if they're in good condition and growing rapidly, they're more inclined to spawn at the younger age. So so sort of paradoxically, like you know, for a given species, a bigger salmon tends to be an older salmon, and it was one that was sort of growing at a slower rate and it took longer to get big. When does that So when does that like, um, that trigger or decision happened for salmon? Oh, it's that? Is that not well understood? How? You know? It's not really my area. I mean, I but I can speculate that, you know, probably late winter springtime, you know, you know, they're they're out in the Pacific somewhere and and and it's it's either time to turn and start heading home or not, you know, and your body start like making the eggs, yeah exactly, to mature sexually and yeah exactly, so you know they need to leave allow some time for that. So it's not a you know, not a last minute or a game time decision. Yeah, yeah, because you're you're like takes months to develop them. Yeah exactly. You know, in general, um with chums or whatever. How far out into the ocean do they go way out, like all the way out, all of them. Yeah, I mean they're overlapping and in their ocean distribution. North American um salmon in general, she noook tend to be a little more coastal king salmon, but you know the others, they're overlapping with Asian fish, and they're all intermingled out in the middle of the Gulf and out in the middle of the North Pacific. And like a North ammon who might otherwise going to North Korea or is going to Siberia, is interacting at sea with our fish. Yes, yeah, wow, man, I didn't all that really. Yeah, but a king might be more of a homebody there there. Yeah, I mean there's yeah, they tend to stick closer. I mean, they tend to stick closer to the coast. Yeah. Yeah. And then then you just think about the fisheries, right, like people catch along the coast of Alaska, and presumably for theirselves, people catch king salmon year round winter kings they call Yeah, they called the black mouth. Yeah, yeah, but you know who there aren't any coho inshore that Yeah, there's no winter cohole fisher, there's no you know, there's no chum salmon inshore or so um. But yeah, there are king salmon in coastal waters all the time. When you say interact with these other salmon out there, is it like one school passes by the other school or is it like all of a sudden they're like, hey, let's all get together and feed together. That's a good question. I don't know. No one knows that yet. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe maybe judging by how some people that in sort of engage in that sort of research might see, you know, in a if they're hooking fish or gill netting or whatever, they may see that they're intermingled with fish of Asian origin or whatever. But I'm not that familiar with that. On that same note, do they ever bumping each other and spawning the same spawning sources like or because at that point they are going to their home stream and there won't be two species in the same home stream. Oh for sure. Yeah, yeah, but different timing. But what he was saying is there is fish coming out of Asia and then coming out of North America, that when they're out there growing there, they might be swimming around together, but they go so far out from the ocean that they are competing with each other. But that doesn't happen with a oh I got you, I got you because they split up. Think about if they came all back to the same place, they would cease to be different of different origins. Yeah, I'm saying that each subspecies. There's never a case where species or not each species when it comes from the same you know, freshwater source, like they wouldn't be pinks and jump coming from the same like freshwater spawning ground. Oh yeah, for sure they do. And will they like run into each other at that? Oh yeah? Oh are you saying this dirt? Are you saying that do pinks and chums intermingle out in the high seas opposite in the spawning like back at there's where they you know, they'll be in the river at the same time. Yeah, Oh, definitely, they're choosing like different types of habitat and stuff, but they can certainly overlap during the at the timing of their spawning is there And what made me ask that is like do they ever? Is there ever? I don't know if cross breedings hybridize it. Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that's pretty rare in the native range of salmon. But in the Great Lakes, I know that it's not it's it's not uncommon there. I've seen in the Great Lakes where Pacific several species of Pacific salmon have been introduced. I have seen hybrids of king salmon and pink salmon. Okay, that's really It looks like a great, big humpy doesn't. Yeah, it's goods the way that they are, you know, like you're saying that so much eggs and so much spermy, like big old fish orgy. Yeah. They're all spawning roughly at the same time a year. Yeah. But in the you know, in there in the native range, it's maybe it happens I but not common. Yeah, not common, alright, Dogs and chums they don't go they tend to not go far into the rivers. But but some there was some very serious exceptions. Yeah, like the ones that will goal thousand, thousands of yeah kilometers leased up to Yukon. Yeah, other rivers and pinks are never found up there. No pinks are going a little ways in you know, miles, tens of miles, maybe hundreds of miles, but not thousands. I wouldn't invite the listener to go pull up a map of to pull up a map of North America and ponder for a moment, look at the Yukon. So like you can imagine, like like how big Alaska is biggest state. If you center Alaska over a map with lower forty eight, you kind of like wind up centering Alaska, you know in the around Iowa or so, and um, southeast Alaska is way down into Texas. The I think the Allusians go out to the California coast southeast Alaska like Georgia and down in there. It's just huge. So so, but look at the map of North America and ponder for a moment that fish entering the Yukon. So the Yukon kind of like cuts Alaska half east to west and flows out um in western Alaska. That salmon that are entering the Yukon at the coast are spawning in Canada and in the United States has a treaty with Canada dictating how many salmon we're gonna let swim through the border. It's an enormous journey. Yeah, I don't know how many miles it is at that point, but it's a lot. Yeah. Um, And that's chums. And real quick backup, there's the thing one you touch on the sort of like economic value or the like the table fair value. Chums are low man on the totem pole of the five salmon the least well regarded from a food from a food perspective, I guess, I guess so, and I'm yeah, um, I mean I can speak more as in Alaska and so someone who you know eats a lot salmon and has a lot of conversations about salmon, and it's like starts steep in salmon culture. But yeah, and I don't think there's a great market for them either. But I mean, I think the reason they have the nickname dog salmon is because it's you know, it's often dog food, even even even still today. Um and yeah, pink salmon are pretty low regard in terms of food ue to at least among the last and a lot of them wind can Yeah. Yeah, but there's an industry around can pink salmon, and um, A lot of that goes to Europe and England in particular, in the color on the pink salmon. It might be why they call him pink salmon. That's what that refers to. Yeah, and like reds red Yeah, very red appetizing flesh. Yeah. And yeah, tom salmon don't have great color. Um, and they tend to have low fat content because they're not undergoing a long freshwater migration, and so it kind of keeps the demand down and the price down. They have big eggs though, and um there that's um. They're fish commercially. A lot of their commercial values in the row, most of which gets which probably goes to markets in Asia. Yeah, okay, what's the next salmon? Um, let's go to Sakai reds red, reds, reds or socks um. Yeah. So so similar type of life history pattern. They're anadromous and uh. They the adults returned from the ocean to their natal river or in the case of Saki lakes. Um. They are strongly associated with the lakes and spawning occurs um often in or near lakes. So they go upper river to get to a lake. Yes, yes, exactly right, um and there on. So, like we talked about with pinks and chums, after they emerge from the gravel. Those two had to see. Saki for the most part, had to a lake, and so the spawning occurs like along the beaches and lakes in some cases where it's upwelling or or or sort of wind driven kind of currents um or the spawning feeder streams or even outlet streams, and those vicious are genetically programs and know where that lake is and head for that lake once they had to be an upstream or downstream from their particular location, and they spend a year or two in most or a year or two rearing in that lake in a lake, in a lake, and they get how big in the lake? Oh? What was I think? I'm just roughly yeah, a few inches. What's the advantage there? So then he spends a year or two in a freshwater lake and then he's like, now I will go to the ocean now, yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah, And what's the advantage of that um Probably just it's just a niche they filled, you know, they're in that lake and they're in you know, instead of what we'll talk about how king salmon and soccer and coho salmon sort of make living as juveniles in the river. But they've just served adapt this lifestyle where they're living in a lake and they feed on plankton in the water column. They're sort of a pelagic uh fish for a couple of years, but at some point their needs become too great and they go to see. Uh. It's at some point they sort of in an evolutionary sense, they've made the decision that they can grow a lot faster by migrating to the ocean. They're uh the marine environment is much more productive. There's a lot more food out there, and they reach a size that is big enough that they're not gonna get eaten the moment they poke out there, right. Uh. So it's a bit of a balance how long do you stay in fresh water? But when they reach a certain size the the head of the ocean, they're big enough to survive. I mean, the survival rates very low regardless of how big these fish are when they're migrating. But yeah, they get to a certain size ahead of the ocean, and they take their chances there because the return is potentially you know, huge in terms of the potential for uh the forage base is much larger. And how long do they how long does the redd sak go out to sea. For um, they're rather variable, but um, I would tune to four years. I think it's pretty common. And they come back weighing about what like just from efficient perspective like pound wise, um, oh, like you know, maybe three to six pounds, it is pretty common, just guessing um. And then two quick things, can you explain like what a cokene he is? So yeah, cokeney is a landlocked Sakai salmon. So it's a population of Sakai salmon that lives in a lake. Um. But for whatever reason, they don't they don't. They don't go to the ocean either they sort of you know, made that decision not to go, or they're somehow blocked. And there are natural populate because there's a lot of introduced populations of cocony, but they come from natural populations that somehow through some event. Then no, I don't I don't think coke cocony are necessarily um blocked from going to the ocean instead of just life history. So there are cocony populations that could go to the ocean. Yeah, they say, unless they spin off from that lakes Saki population and just become cocony. Just I mean you can think of it the same way as some resident rainbow trout populations have spun off the steelhead population and just stay played. So the opposite happened there. Yeah, and then but Cokeny's dinky though. Yeah, they don't get big because they mean they reach sexual maturity at a small size because they're in that lake environment. But compare that to how big an ocean saki is. That just shows you that the difference in growth potential between those two environments. And then they'll soccer will do some mega migrations or no they yeah, they used the whole North Pacific. Yeah, no, I mean when they go up a river, they'll shoot. Yeah. I mean they're really attached to lake. So if you have a river system that has a lake, you know, way way way upstream. Uh oh, what's Redfish Lake in Idaho. That's an interesting example. Um, I don't know how far inland that is, but it was a Saki population all the way in Idaho. They're going up the they're going up the Columbia and then into the clear water or whatever. Yeah, I can't yeah. Uh. And then that fish. Talk about this for a minute, because like that fish is a fatty fish. Right. Uh, yeah, you know, I'm not sure about up. Well, here's the question, why do you see why do some people think there's a salmon called a Copper River salmon like as its own species. Sort of, well, it's it's more of a brand than a species. But yeah, um, but so you know, there's in lots of ways salmon adapt to their you know, they're really a product of the river and they adapt their specific river. And you know, so in the case of well I mentioned earlier, fat content, it's sort of it's sort of an adaptive trait of salmon in it relates to um. You know, when salmon begin their freshwater migration, they stop feeding and they live on their fat reserves and fished that um are destined for a spawning ground that's further up some river tend to put on a little more fat than fish that are spawning lower in the watershed. Um. So, the Copper River being a large, relatively large watershed with some you know, in terms of saki some somewhat long migrations, they tend to be a little fatter, and people certainly value that the fatty content. Yeah, yeah, um, and the comparison that's often made you know, in south central alaskas to that of the keena I salmon. That's another. The Kenai River is another really popular local Soakai salmon fishery, and the migration uh for the freshwater migration there isn't quite as long, and people regard those some people at least regard those fish as being less fatty and less flavorable. But there's probably some data on it. I don't. I'm not familiar with it though. Can you real quick explain the dip net fishery that you engage in? Yeah? So uh. Alaska residents are allowed to participate in a number of fisheries that are called personal use fisheries where um, yeah, they let you do some things that would be considered poaching pretty much anywhere else. Uh. So, there are a few in south central Alaska, the Copper River, the Kenai River, the Casillaf River, and sometimes with some others um during US principally, yeah, these are mostly focused on sok salmon, but the state opens it up to for locals to fish with dip nets and um. A dip net is defined as basically a landing net with a hoop up to five feet in diameter, so they're potentially very large nets, and people will line up on the along the beach and waiters with these nets in the water or in some cases fish from a boat and sort of told these nets down river, you gotta hold them in your hand, and you're allowed, um, you know, a generous supply of salmon for your family. Um, like it might be fifteen sock eyes for the head of household twenty five right now. So I think the Kenai and the copper of separate are managed separately with separate limits. But you're allowed twenty five for the head of the household and ten that this is an annual limit, and then ten fish for each member of the household. Um so my family would be allowed fifty five salmon from each of those rivers. That's far more than we need. But yeah, we are so often we head out dipping that in and get some fish. Yeah, like up to your ankle deep in the boat fish. Yeah yeah, But it's I mean, it's it's nice to be able to go out and one shot, get a whole bunch of salmon and you know, take taking care of them, get him in the freezer and be done with it, you know, and then can them freeze him. Yeah, different people do different things with them. But do you still mess around with your steel canner? No? No, I haven't used that in years. I want to get it out though. Yeah, you know, I'm telling about Johanni. He bought like a thing to make a like a home job, to make steel cans instead of glass instead of glass jars. Yeah. It just it just crimps the lid on the can, That's what it does. And then you still process it in a canner. You know. That thing's pretty sweet. It is cool. I remember you made me a teal duck in a can. Yeah. Alright, So that's the sock I and the sock is the earliest. He runs quicker than anybody right in the spring. In the summer, oh that that run timing all depends on where you're at. Um, but around here, yeah, the King Salmon and sock I tend to be the earliest. June, um, yeah, even May for king salmon. In some places, Um, they're they're starting yeah, um June July for ski around here. And then yeah, later in June and July that um, pinks and chumps starts showing up. And then pretty much probably everywhere in Alaska that the Coho or the silvers are the tend to be the latest. Let's move on to the next one. So we've covered pinks, pink zompies, chums, dogs, red sock eys. Uh, Coho silver that's the next one. Yeah, we'll save that. We'll save the king for last. Yeah. Um so yeah, Coho or silver. Um, they're cool salmon. The thing I like about them is that um there and a sort of an aggressive and a sporty salmon. They like to chase f lies, and they like to hit lures, and they run every little trickle. There's just co everywhere. Um, and yeah, you can fish them just about anywhere. They're they're they're and they're you know, a great eating salmon. Um. They're they're kind of like, yeah, just like the every man sam. And you know they run all over the place. Um. In terms of life history, uh, obviously an adromus spawn in so a little bit later in the other they're more at least around here, they're more of a fall spawner, uh September October. The eggs over winning the gravel emerge in the spring. But unlike all the others we've talked about up to this point, the Coho than spends two two years typically in Alaska two years um rearing in a stream. They don't go to a lake like the soccer go to see like the pinks. How big about two hundred millimeters or something? Yeah? Three three fish? Yeah yeah, And so in Alaska it takes a couple of years to do that. Sometimes you'll see him taking a little longer. A few of them go out after one year, but most like you're looking at a dinky little trout, but it's a co home yeah, I mean yeah, if to the casual observer it would look like a small rainbow trout or something. Yeah. Yeah, and then goes out to the ocean and lives out in the ocean for how long? One year? That's it? Yeah? Oh really Yeah. So when you're catching twelve pounds silvers, those are a year old? No, they're three years old? Yeah, one year? One year? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. So he spends way more of his life in fresh water than he does in salt water. Yes, yeah, in Alaska, I think further south, um, they they tend to more commonly spend one year in freshwater. And that's a good eating fish, but not everybody admits how good they are. You say, not everybody. I feel like there's some guys that are like kind of down on silver's. Some guys will only eat a king. Yeah, there's like sock i king guys. Yeah, I was gonna ask the socks and the co host Roughly, usually for for the average Alaskan that fishes, they considered to be equals. Yeah. I think people sometimes do different things with them too, like like sake hold up the canning really well, you know, so a lot of people home can um. I think the color on that the sock is really appealing to you know, that's a really pretty filet when you take it out of the freezer too. But there can't be as many um, there can't be nearly as many tons of silver's harvested commercially. No as saki no no and no soak i r um in in. In areas where you have rivers with lakes on them, these sort of lake systems and sakai are incredibly abundant. And those are those are you know, the big dollar salmon fisheries in Alaska, the big dollar commercial salmon fisheries. Here are saki fisheries. Here's here's a quick one to throw us off the sequence that we're going through. But how many uh, how many years would you have to go back to find a common ancestor and would you oh yeah, yeah, um oh, it's in the millions maybe, like I want say, six to maybe ten or fifteen million years. I think like that those the five, the five salmon that we're talking about had all differentiated by about six million years ago. What the hell is that fishes groove, man, I don't know. And then going further back, the the Atlantic salmon peeled off the Pacific salmon line at there's a common ancestor there too, uh yeah, like all the different weather changes and stuff that. Yeah, so well, I think you brought this up earlier. But you know, there's uh, you know, a theory out there that you know, all that speciation in you know, where you have one species of Atlantic salmon but five different Pacific salmon. That has to do with all the topographical diversity around the Pacific rim and the you know, the uplift of mountain ranges and things segregated habitats and created opportunities for divergent evolution and ye like those fish can go and experience so many different kinds of yeah, yeah, but then you know around the sort of the Atlanta the Atlantic rim. You never get that term, but um, yeah, just just doesn't have the you know, the all the mount uplift and the potential for habitat frank it's a little more homogeous. Yeah, that's the thinking on that. Anyway. That's interesting. So the last one, did we give the did we give the silver cohorts? Due? Um? I think so. Yeah, you kind of finished on just saying how we kind of got all excited when we realized that he's he's only he's going out on the ocean three inches and the year later he comes back as a twelve fift. Yeah, they grow fast and it's really interesting, like you know how you know, we catch silvers around the cabin and the salt water and that's like some of my favorite fishing ever. You know, I absolutely love it. Um. But those fish are packing on like a pound a week when they're sort of in the inshore, like on the last bit of their sort of pret pre spawn migration as they're moving to those channels in Southeast Alaska and presumably other places. You know, as they're nearing maturity, they're feeding like crazy and just packing on weight. You know, we haven't touched on the different fish. Um. Do they tend to harget different stuff out in the ocean. Yeah, there, Yeah, there's a I know a little bit about that. Um. Chinooks hammon tend tend to be a little higher on the food web. They're eating more fish, fewer invertebrates. Um Saki tend to be um consuming more invertebrates, less fish. Um. I think I think pink and Chalmer are a little lower, you know, a little more invertebrate in their diet, less fish, and like kings will go out and eat squid and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think all of them would eat a squid given the opportunity. I mean, they're all generalists, but they you know, they they have their own sort of preferences. Okay, so kings chinooks? What the hell is the word chinook? It's gonna be a native work? Oh yeah, from where? I don't know. Is coho native word? You think? I don't know. It's a good question. Silver, Like when you talk about a coho or silver, the silver has to refer or to the side of that fish. Yeah, I can't imagine that. I mean, it looks like it's chrome. Yeah, yeah, like made out of chrome, made out of stainless steel, devil dip chrome um so chinook probably a native word king being he is the big bad mofo of king salmon, the bad mofol the salmon world. So what's their basic rundown? Uh, quite similar to that of the co hoo. They'll hang out in the freshwater. Yeah here, Uh, most of the king salmon in Alaska spend a year in fresh water and then several years in salt water. Is how that goes. That's why it gets so big. Yep, they'll go out for several years. Three four is pretty common. Five uh, certainly happens. So when someone catches a giant is it is it likely that that just meant he was out longer, he was doing the right thing and not make a mistake. It's a little bit of both. But yeah, I think like a really hog king salmon, it's has been out there a while, four or five years. But then that's what earlier you kind of mentioned this like the sort of paradox. So that means that there was a handful of times when his body felt that it wasn't quite ready, it wasn't right. It wasn't getting it wasn't getting what it needs, and so postpones that spawning run but then turns into some fifty sixty pound fish. That's exactly right. Yeah, if he was really kicking ass, he would have came back. He would have went to see and came back that summer as a jack. If they're really growing fast, sometimes they don't even need a river. So does a jack die when it spawns? Every sam we've talked about dies when it spawns. Yes, yes, Pacific salmon. Well, it's a little scrolling because of the steel head here, which is sort of technically a Pacific salmon, but that that that that's the only one that that that will live to spawn again. And a steel head is a rainbow trout. I mean this is a layman's it's a rainbow trout that goes to the ocean for some of it's an anadromous rainbow trout. Yeah, it's the same genus as the Pacific salmon, but it rain But a steel head can spawn multiple times, yes, yeah, but Pacific salmon always spawning after they die. Atlantics can go back to the ocean. Yes, yes, there's not a death sentence to spawn. No, No, I mean a lot of do die. What is the advantage of the dying? So the advantage of the dying is it's it's a trade off. They're basically committing all of their resources to one reproductive event so they can make more eggs, bigger eggs, they can defend their nests. They're just plowing it onto one event at the expense of any future potential spawning. Going for broke. They're just going for broke, exactly right in an evolutionary sense. Yeah, And if like that works for them, why did it not work? It's just like I wanted to be like, why did it not work for steelhead? Yeah? I just yeah, they're operating in a different A good time machine question would be to go back more towards that, like the common ancestor and what was that fish's groove? Yeah, what's the ancestral trade there? Yeah? Was the whole dying thing later like something that came around later or have they been doing that the dying trick for a long time? That's a good question. Are the Atlantic salmon do they have traits more similar to that initial like before that the split of the species in that that they can spawn multiple times and that they didn't have the like you said, Yeah, that's a good question, And I mean, like there are I'm not sure something you can derive from the fossil record, like you know, things about the new Mine is the baby, you know, So there's not a lot of salmon fossils to begin with. So um, yeah, somebody might know the answer to that, but it's not me. Why do uh, why do you damn? Why are damns so bad for fish? Uh? Quite a the impact the habitat in a lot of ways, But the most obvious is that they blocked migration that is the most upstream and downstream, and they convert a big chunk of river to a pond, you know, and all the and um, and you get a whole set of predators that tend to live in those ponds. Right. And then when you when you have juvenile fish on their seaward migration and they're used to sort of riding the spring melt plume out to the ocean and they're making that journey not trip. And also they hit a lake you know that really slows things down. Yeah, yeah, exactly, follow while line and pike, minnows and all kinds of their fish that that weren't originally there that want to eat you. Yeah, and then you got turbans to content contend with, and you know, the impacts of which mechanically killed the fish. I mean like meaning like smack them in the head. Well it's you know, uh yeah, they're not it's not plenty of fish pass room and live. But but and this is more Pacific Northwest type stuff and it's not really my you know, my area. But um you guys don't have any major um, you don't have any major No, we don't have big hydro projects here. No, this one that's kicked around once in a while unless you's sitting the river, but um no, it's not. Um yeah, we're sort of lagging behind you guys. I'm hoping you don't catch Yeah. But like, so, why are kings? Okay, the is the future bright for pink salmon? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know pink salmon being so short lived there, you know, they're quite adaptable, they're look a little bit weedy, you know, they're uh, I don't think anyone's numbers are really high right now. But why are kings then, Like, why are kings so screwed? Like what is their achilles? Heel. So, yeah, like you never hear any good news about kings. Yeah, it's like like river system. At the river system, it's like there's fewer, they're not as big, fewer, they're not as big. Yeah. Yeah, so the king Samon had been trending downward in size for decades, decades, decades. Yeah, and do you feel that it's human causes this size? Selective harvest probably plays a role in that. Yeah, there the there there's a fair bit of speculation about what's driving that. It's probably not any one thing, um, but people have been harvesting salmon for a long time and and it's it's non random, um. And so yeah, selectively high resting larger individuals is you know it's gonna drive down size. Yeah, so that's probably part of it. Changes in ocean productivity, uh, food resources at sea, that sort of things probably also plays a role. So like general general overfishing in the seas could be could could not not I mean not overfing overfishing service separate issue. You know that's taking somebody that they can't replace themselves, right or or but this is this is sort of fishing in a non random way, right, You're you're you're selectively harvesting the larger or faster growing individuals, and you're sort of left with the but but what about the food aspect if so? Um, yeah, king salmon. I mentioned earlier that they feed a little bit more coastally. They're a little bit more of a cold adapted salmon. They're in deeper water, thre colder water. Um, they're speeding in a sort of a different food web than the other salmon. They tend to be more the surface, more offshore. And yes, it's it's possible that, um, the changing climate patterns and ocean circulation patterns have affected their food resources in a way that hasn't impact of the resources of the other species in my right, and saying that they're just kind of screwed, is that not? Is that true or not true? I don't know. I mean there's a long history of salmon, you know, having problems and bouncing back, you know, And um, what's an example of salmon the head of problem and bounce back? Oh there, you know, any look at any run within Alaska. There there are periods of low productivity and periods of high productivity. It happens in lots of places. Um, So you think that the problem with kings that like if you just sort of like I, I go beyond casual, but you know, I take in news about fish. I haven't selected for my personal news feed the fisheries. I'm always reading like really bad stuff about kings. Could it wind up being there in ten years? Were like, man, did we have a rough stretch? Yes? Really, it very well could. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's probably related to ocean conditions. And you know that there are these regime shifts and things that occur that can't begin to understand the physics behind them. But there are these regime shift to change in the ocean, and it's like throwing a switch and all of a sudden things just turn around. It's it's possible that could happen, or it's possible that I mean like El Nino La Nina type activity exactly exactly, or or it's possible that's that somehow we've you know, affected the fish of their habitat in a way that it's not they're not compatible with it anymore. The only time will tell um. But go ahead, no, uh, finish up. I can say there there are you know, certain examples of fish having you know, potentially prolonged periods of low productivity that all of a sudden something changes and they turned it around. You know, Alaska has here, we have the benefit that are that are you know, are sort of freshwater river habitat is really intact. It's the most of it is is in a really good condition, and um that that gives them a lot of resilience, um that they don't have in other places. You mentioned something to me before that I've mentioned a couple of times that you're talking about it. We're talking about conservation, wildlife, conservation, and you were you were saying, how just speaking of general sense, not applied to any particular species. If you're saying the conservation is such a different thing in the Lower forty eight, where you guys have been a recovery mode for so long. Yeah, and Alaska it's more like like you're not really in a recovery mode. You're in almost in a descriptive mode up here, Yeah, and a conserving mode. We're trying to learn from the lessons of Lower forty eight, like what exactly did those guys do there to screw their salmon up so bad? And how can we avoid making the same mistakes? Yeah, Yeah, Um, it's interesting to a lot of conservation efforts here too, and I think it's I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. But they're trying to like foster a relationship between Alaskans and salmon, or or to strengthen that relationship, to make like salmon like a real sort of um, cultural touchstone here so that people are more inclined to want to protect everybody. Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah, Yeah, I think that's effort well spent, just to increase the cultural awareness, cultural value, yep, to make it be that this more valuable than everybody cares, more valuable than gold, or more valuable than yeah exactly. Yeah. And part of that just pointing out how economically and culturally they are important. And part of it is trying to you know, strengthen relationships that people have. And there's a lot of were moving in and out of the last all the time, and you know, huge part of our population somewhat transient, but getting those people connected to salmon. What was it that caused, um, what was the thinking that led people to want to start beginning to introduce salmon into the Great Lakes where we grew up. Oh so, in terms of the steel head. I think that was largely a sport fish. That was the first of the salmon to be introduced, and that was late eighteen hundreds. Well, they tried steel head first, to my knowledge, they may have tried other salmon that didn't take, but steel head head were introduced and they got him to go quickly from California steel head stock and they introduced him in the late eighteen hundreds. And yeah, and there was a lot of kind of hatch reproduction keeping that propped up. But I think that there are some self supporting populations there. But the Pacific salmon um chinook salmon were introduced what late sixties, Yeah, I don't Yeah, the chronology it was weird. It's that really the main point I wanted to ask you about. But uh, but yeah, the motivation was that, um, you know, the Great Lakes had been sort of taken over by one wave after another of invasive species, and um, the al wife was one that was introduced via the sort of one and shipping canal that came in from the Atlantic Coast into the Great Lakes, and its population that exploded by the I guess late sixties, maybe early seventies, and the state of Michigan. To my knowledge, stock that shinook salmon in an attempt to get something to eat all those ol wives up. Um do you remember that wives and weird kids? Oh yeah, I remember that. Like just carpeting the beaches was like national news stories. And I know that they tried multiple times to get various fish going. But but like, um, so they established a pink population the Great Lakes. Yeah, and that was accidental. Uh. All the pinks and the great salmon and the Great Lakes came from un accidental stocking at I think it was from an Ontario hatchery um on Lake the Lake Huron side. And I think they were holding pink salmon at a hatchery because they were trying to introduce introduce if I have this right, they were trying to introduce a population on the Canadian Atlantic somewhere and they were holding them on a hatchery in the Great Lakes. And some escape somehow, and that was all took. They just adapted very very quickly to in the northern waters more. Yeah, the northern maybe half of the Great Lakes. There a lot they you know, they moved, you know, from from their point of the least that they were establishing runs in nearby streams, you know, pretty quickly, and they spread around the upper Great Lakes. Does it make sense now that so so they have you know, they got chinooks or kings in the Great Lakes. There co hos in the Great Lakes. There's yeah, and there's rain or steel hitting the Great Lakes. Does it make sense that they were that? Would you look now knowing you know, no one's like, oh, yeah, of course sock ey's and chums aren't gonna work in the Great Lakes, you know, No, I think I think that's kind of hard to predict. It's sometimes they take and sometimes they don't, And there's just a bit of a history of people trying to move salmon around, you know. Um, But yeah, I don't know if anyone would be like guess as to whether or not they would take or not. But yeah, those are I know, sok I have been tried in the Great Lakes. They didn't take coho. I'm not even sure that they're self sustaining anywhere there, I think so, But man, that's the haven't that's another world. There's a book that I have called Fishing the Great Lakes, and it's an environmental history of the Great Lakes, and it gets into the collapse of the native fisheries and then just that long history of people trying to make up for it. But rather than fixing, you know, and sometimes the problems are unfixable, but like, rather than fixing the problem, let's just see if there's some other thing that might like it here as we do whatever, and like interesting things that, you know, the logging boom where they were, you know, logging off the Great Lake States and rafting all those logs out in the Great Lakes and the bays and estuary areas or it's not use it's not saltwater, but the river and all the bark when you're floating logs, the bark eventually falls away from the tree, and that you have spawning areas that were covered in twelve fifteen feet of bark, destroying fisheries, and then over fishing destroying fisheries, and later people being like, well, let's try maybe a salmon like it. I don't know, you know, and not to the point where they introduced the common carp l wives smell. Carp was intentional, the cart was intentional. Brown trout, rainbow trout almost like like in some ways, like some of the biggest like ticket fish items in the Great Lakes, And I don't know how widely understood it is by people that live in those areas, the extent to which their lakes have become sort of an experimental aquarium. Yeah, I don't know if people make like a value judgment about it. We sure didn't growing up. I mean, the coolest fish you could catch is a big king. Yeah. I was gonna say, it's when we when we talked to who do we talk to about that? About how Um, it's just like the baseline that you're used to, the shifting, shifting baselines. That's what you came into, and so it's fine. But yeah, but if you were out trolling for kings and he caught a Laker, people be like, oh Laker, greaseball. Yeah, greaseball. So that's like the native fish which kind of like built this state, man and there was like a thriving commercial industry around that fish and all this history and the Native Americans that lived here like lived off that fish and relied on it, and it becomes where it comes up. You're like, I was hoping for the one that came on a t okay and got dumped up. I was hoping for the one that got jumped out of a barrel. You know. I was talking to some biologists from the Great Lakes recently and it was I was I was pleasantly surprised learned that the stars have sort of realigned for Lake Trout and they're having a bit of a comeback now, the native Lake Trout and the Great Lakes. That was nice to hear. Perception wise, population wise. I think perception wise too, I think they're a little more valued now than they used to be. What others If kings are down right now, pinks are up right now? Everything everything? Yeah, yeah, yeah, numbers are great, like the populations are. So it might not be that we just broke something that we won't be able to fix. It might be like kings, I mean some rivers we just broke, right Oh yeah, like I mean yeah, a lot a lot of them, Columbia, Sacramento, just that this broke. Is there a way? I know this isn't your business, but like, do you think that there's a way that uh to turn around some of the broke systems, particularly like some of the rivers that are so busted in California? Man, I there's a whole lot of people working on that. Uh, he's talking to one of them, because up here, man, it's like there, like it seems to be like a general optimism about salmon. Well, I mean, yeah, they I mean they're they're there, they're at at historic sort of a high point, and they're abundance right now. Um, the last couple of decades have been great for salmon in general, with the exception of Chinook having sort of a ten year slump and productivity. Yeah, let's say something happened and the ocean's got a just whatever, the ocean's got a degree or too warmer. Would that shift open up a lot of habitat to salmon that they're not currently using because it's too cold, Like, would you take with the whole show just kind of move north or the reasons that it wouldn't work like that. That's an oceanographer. Um no, I I think there are fish running rivers further north now, like into art of Alaska and presumably art of Canada. Um that maybe didn't have runs in the past. Yep. But see that gets another question I want to ask you, but expound on that for a minute. And you know, fisher salmon are certainly you know, moving further north in the Bearing Sea and beyond. But um, yeah, I don't think you can assume that that that you know, just just giving the shape of that basin, right, you're losing. If you just shift the entire envelope of salmon for the north, you have a lot less habitat to work with. Oh, I mean because it shrinks as it gets north. Yeah yeah, um so I'm just yeah, but the idea that they shift, like like you could have a northern river that right now doesn't get fish and it's just too cold or whatever. So let's say there was this idea that like the river would have fish turn up in it. That brings up a really interesting question is that their fidelities at their homes stream must not be entirely strict. It's not absolute, no, because how would have fish ever find a new river if he has to go back to where he was born? I mean go back fifteen thousand years and you know most of Alaska salmon habitats under ice. Yeah, so what accounts for that? That's a good point. So during like you know, the all the different glacial periods, Yeah, there was no salmon run because it was just yeah, yeah, So, I mean, you know, built into their sort of life history is a certain propensity for a small number of individuals to go to the wrong river. What percent do they know? It's small. It's small, and it varies by species, and it varies by it's it's it's sort of it's an adaptive trade. It's sort of bread into the system. You know. Oh, it's great that some of them would make a mistake. Oh yeah, yeah, it makes perfect sense. It allows for a little genetic mixing among population and allows for colonization a new habitats. So yeah, it's built into their life history. Do you remember in Sioux Sat Marie. Um, So, I'm gonna paint this picture for for the listeners. In Sue Saint Marie, Michigan, you have a the St. Mary's River drains Lake Superior and it falls I think two or eighteen feet or something. Something follows some number of feet more than ten through the Sioux Rapids and in the St. Mary's River flows down. After drain, Lake Superior flows down the St. Mary's River and flows into Lake Huron. In Sue St. Read there's a there's a hydro electric project where they cut a channel to funnel. Some of that water that's coming down the St. Mary's to flow through a hydro electric canal that then goes out and and pushes a bunch of electric turbans. So it's like they chiseled off a branch of the stream to power and hydro electric dam. It goes from above, the falls, loops around, it dumps, and below they're capitalizing on that whatever it is, fourteen to eighteen twenty, whatever hell number feed is. It capitalizes on that fall to get a good head of water going to push to turn the turbans and a dam and this damn has a bunch of turbans. But some of the terms that were given over to a fish lab. You know where I'm going with this, And all the turbans or tunnels would have names, and there's one through whatever to hell, and they would rear atlantics as a part of this experimental project to like establish Atlantics in the Great Lakes. They would rear Atlantics in a certain in a certain tunnel, like it's number one. He's on the end of the building. Yeah, And you could go there and we would go there to fish whitefish, and you could go and look and you could just see the Atlantics that were returning, and they would return to the fish lab. Do you remember this, Yeah, they returned to that tunnel. I mean they go they nose into a lot of those tunnels, but they were like the one that they were coming from. You would look in the like wait that they'd be like ten and that one three in the next one. Yeah, and then maybe like one in the next one, and you can sort of see like how good they were hitting the right spot whatever they were smelling or keying it's scent. Yeah, and then there was some other ones who were like close but not quite yeah yeah, shifting around down there. Um. Yeah, these are separated by yards. Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, that that they Ah, there's a a window of time when those sam and or young were they sort of memorize or imprint the scent of their stream and that's all. That's the last, you know, bit of migrating they do. They're doing it by their nose. What's the first bit of migrating they do. I was sort of like, I don't understand biologically how it works, but it's sort of like a um they're triangulating their position based on like sun angle and magnetism and things like that. So they have sort of a I think of it was like a mental map, and they're using that to get in the rough vicinity and then at some point their nose more or less takes over. So if you went on the high is it believe that if you went on the high seas? Okay, you have a you have a salmon that came out of a specific river, So it came out of the Kenai River and he's out on the high season, and you wouldn't caught him in blindfolded him and then helly, helly lifted him two miles and put him back in the ocean. Do you feel like he'd turned up with the same river? Oh, because it can't be backtracking. Where did you catch him? I'm just saying, you pick him out of the high seas somewhere and blind in the middle of the ocean, and oh, but then you un blindfold them, you have no problem. So it's not like it's not like he remembers his route. No, No, it's something else. No, he has like he has some way of fixing his position on a mental map. Yeah. Man, we are we studying that right now. How they there's a lot of work has been done on this. Yeah, I read about the magnetism stuff and yeah, it's fascinating, man, you know. And then they work on it with turtles a lot. Okay, how do those turtles know to find that beach? You know? On the scent? And there were some cool studies done in the Great Lakes back I want to sixties or maybe seventies, probably when they were first introducing salmon there um. But they held these young salmon um in a they I think they held them in a stream and they dripped some certain chemical in that stream, and though salmon imprinted on that smell, and they released those salmon and then roam around the Great Lakes for a couple of years, and when they're salmon were maturing and coming back, they went like a few miles down the beach and dripped that same chemical into the wrong stream, and all of salmon went to the wrong stream where the chemicals being dripped. So when they're closing in, they're closing in, they just pick up that scent and follow it in. Yeah, blows your mind. Yeah, how it can be so unique each area, you know. Oh, but you figure all the different ions, you know, dissolved, all the different types of ions from all the different rocks and soil and everything in that water. It's like they had this whole portfolio of concentrations and like they just learned that smell. You know, Can you real quick talk about uh, this is the last thing I have you explained. Can you talk about the function of moving marine resources? How salmon is a is a mechanism that moves marine resources in land. Yeah. Yeah, they're um a sort of vector to move um energy and nutrients up rivers um. Like we said earlier, in in high latitudes, fresh waters are much less productive than ocean waters. And salmon did this cool trick where they go out to the sea and it's not intentional, it's just to buy product of their life history. But they go out to sea and they they put on a bunch of weight and then they swim you know, upstream and and and bring with them all of this fat and protein and phosphorus and nitrogen and all the different forms of fertilizer that the fish that rear in those streams and insects and the algae, and so they're sort of fertilizing that stream, feeding bears, feeding birds. Yeah yeah, and that that that river is you know, it's flowing is taking spending all this time taking nutrients from the landscape and bringing them out to the ocean and then salm and sort of reverse that flow once a year and and bring in you know, in cases with big runs, many many tons of nutrients back to the land. Um. Yeah. And it's definitely it's it has a lot of um sort of feedbacks within the within the ecosystem in terms of feeding. So do you feel like there's probably places where if you eliminated the salmon, you could you would you could feasibly trigger a sort of ecological collapse. Um, yeah, it would. You know, it would certainly be bad for you know, large mobile consumers that move around and eat salmon, like bears and you know, eagles another another scavin Jery Yeah. Um. And it's some of the work that I've been involved with the showing that um juvenile salmon that are exposed to um large volumes of salmon eggs and other types of resources will grow faster than those that don't have access to as much you know, salmon eggs and flesh and other marine resources. And there's a whole the juveniles are eating, the are directly feeding off the growing the carcasses of the growing Yeah, the carcasses and the eggs, you know. And yeah, there's been a whole lot of work in different places around Alaska looking at different aspects of this. But um, oh, like for instance, out in Bristol Bay and southwest Alaska, where you know, there are trophy rainbow populations out there that are um fished by anglers from all over the world, you know, from the state at high end lodges, and it's a it's one of Alaska's sort of premier trophy sport fisheries. But um those trophy rainbow trout out there get you know, a huge fraction of their their annual nutritional intake just by eating salmon eggs. It's a a huge diet item for them. And it comes to a pretty short period of time. You know, it's our late summer early falls are getting most of their caloric intake for the whole year. Yeah, just chill out. This chill out, water gets cold or metabolism slows down and they just kind of hang on to that wait, you know, until the next year. Get more questions when those salmon are out in the ocean. I believe there's a term for this for two different types of fish out in the ocean, ones that are just like constantly moving and constantly eating, versus one that actually has a resting time. Do you understand my question? Yeah, kind of changes the flesh too, right, the type of flesh. Yeah, but salmon are all on the same page with Yeah, what's that called like a I mean, yeah, I get cruising pelagic fish. They're mobile, they're always swimming. They never go down to the bottom and sit there. No, they're not gonna go down like a halibit or rock fish and hang out on the bottom. Yeah, but they're they're a roving epiplagic predator. He's just eating just constantly. I mean, it's just like that's just slack off at certain times. But yeah, I mean they're they're you know, they're they're a yeah, an actively swimming mobile fish. They never sleep like how we perceive of sleep. Huh. Mask Oh, I thought you were making a statement because this is something I've never really looked into. Yeah, but I mean they never go they can't go like lay down. I guess you're right. Yeah, you're like what we used to go as kids, gigging frogs. I shouldn't say this because now we didn't know what. You're not supposed to do it, but you can't do it the harder. You're not supposed to gig frogs and missig with artificial light. But we'll go out with artificial lights. Remember to look for bullfrogs and crayfish. That's perfect legal. We'd go out to do that and you'd catch bluegirls were like that blue is a sleepy you cast blueos just like completely zoned out. You almost like walk up and grabl Yeah, you know. I around the shack. I have seen salmon where they're sitting at the surface still with their fins out of the water. Sometimes I don't maybe that's sleeping, yeah, but they are. They tend to use the top of the water, the light, the lit version of the water. Oh yeah, even when they're out at in the middle of the ocean. Yeah, they're just using the top of the water column. Yeah, not down deep dirt. Final questions. I got a couple actually lay it on me man um so finn in I did. I did a little person in years ago, and we'd always set around in a finning group and jumpers, And what's the purpose of both of those when they're kind of like close to it. Oh, like, what are they accomplishing with that behavior when they're all pooled up with their fins out of the water, and what are they do when they jump? Yeah, Like I've heard various opinions of what they're trying to do. Yeah, I don't even have one. Yeah behavior, you know one of the things people says. I mean, how do you answer that question? I guess yeah, yeah, No, it's cool to be around at when like when you really know that there's it's cool to be around all that life. You know, you can just look out there and see salmon fen sticking up at the water and his jumpers everywhere, and there's you know, it's way larger below. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. But is that them just like the flow? Yeah, So there's not a good theory about why somebody might have one. I just don't. Yeah, it's not a test that theory. Yeah, it's I think it's a difficult one to test. And then the other one I really want to ask about the bourbon leech, but that when it makes sense, a bourbon with a parasite do look like a leech? Probably was okay? Cool? And then one more and this one's a little more philosophical. There may not be an answer to it. But just because you've had such a I mean as a fish biologists, that intimate relationship with each species, do you find yourself prone to be particular to one of those five that we talked about in your region of study? There's that not a fair question, no, I yeah, I mean professionally, I really like ho ho because they're just everywhere, and they're abundant, and they live in fresh water a long time and I work in fresh water, and um, yeah, I think they're super cool fish, but um cool, and and that's prioritized over like the angling of them or eating of them. It's like their activity as as all it all works together, you know. I got a thing for coh and part of yeah, exactly exactly, it's all it's all what I root for man, Yeah, Angland and my professional life. I'll sort of get intertwined, you know. Um. But yeah, I really, I really do have a thing for I really love cut and kings too. Um. I'm fascinated by them and it's just a huge accomplishment to me to catch on those thing, especially out in saltwater. I love it. Um, here's my hes that cool on you. Yeah, it's great, cause I got one last thing I forgot to ask about. This is gonna suffice as my concluder, and you can do a concluder if you want. You told me an interesting thing one time where you're saying that, um, it's possible to have or it's maybe possible. It's an idea that could be entertained. That's possible to have too many fish go up a river. Yeah, because you would think like the more fish the better, like bring them on, bring them on up the river. But there's a point at which you might get like, um, diminishing returns. Can you can talk about that for a minute. This is more of a theoretical concept or if it has like like no, no, it has some applicable, it has some application, and there's probably there some data behind it. Um. But you know in terms of the bears and the eagles, you know there can't be too many salmon. Um. But yeah, so that's actually a really big can of worms. He just opens on it. I start with this, but um, can I tell you what I understood you to be saying? No, no, yeah, go ahead, go ahead, Okay, we were out one time. I don't know you. I was just hanging around with you and we were doing some work and we were out checking mental traps. I think you were like we were out checking mento traps because you were out trapping baby co hos in the river, remember this, And you were looking at things of like how, how what's the density and what's the tolerance of competition of co host when we're spending all this time, when they're spending these two years in the stream where they were born. And you were saying that you're telling this idea that, um, it could be that you could have less cohoes, less cohole babies in the river, but they're all so much more healthier because they're not suffering from too much competition. And you could have just like trying an idea out and maybe like sending out fifty that are super fit and had like a great resource of food could in the end be better than emaciated. Weren't they weren't doing good? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, so yeah you'd want it with a better healthier return. Yes, yes, so, um, you know, a river of any size has a finite amount of spawning and rearing habitat um. And so when you get to a point where there are. If you have exceptionally large run and lots and lots and lots of spawners, you get a new position where you have a wave of fish come in, they start building dusts, they spawn there, and then the next wave of fish comes in, digsolo's nuts up, lays more nuts on top of them. Right, And so only the last batch of fish that spawn they're are gonna really have any output. Right, you had a lot of excess, I mean, so they could excavate and destroy each other's nests. Yeah. Yeah, And in the in the trade they call it nests superimposition. They're just building nuts on top of other nests. And the thought is that those you could have harvested a lot of those fish without having any negative impact on the return. But the same thing plays out too in the rearing habitat, especially for those fish, the species that rear in fresh water. Right. So so if you have way too many and they start with the word term too many, I'm already seeing how where I messed it up. So if you have a really really large sock I run and you have a lot of spawners that are all producing fry that then migrating to a rearing lake, and the lake has this sort of the scenario that you're describing with the code, and many go. You have a you know, a huge biomass, a huge number of juveniles there, and the per capita food resources that are low, and there's a lot of competition, and you know that those space can't all get big, right, So yeah, there's So that's kind of how salm and are managed in Alaska and elsewhere. They they take a lot of a long time series of data where for a given river um they observe how many salmon are going in the river to spawn, and then from that given brood year, in subsequent years, how many salmon come back. And they so over every spawning run they calculate how many subsequent returns were produced, and over a long period of time, you can sort of develop this empirical lationship between the number of spawners that you let into a river and the number of salmon to come back later from the spawners. At least in theory, you'll see sort of you know, that relationship. If you picture graph with you know, the number of spawners on the X axis. You know, had low numbers of spawners, you can get a lot of returns right, but that levels off eventually. You can at some point, you can put more spawners into the system, but you don't get back a lot of fish because of competition for nests and competition for food and that sort of thing. So you might be looking at a river thinking, we're gonna have let's just use simple numbers, a hundred fish are gonna um come back up here next year, and we might be able to harvest half of all the fish to come up, and you're still gonna have a hundred comeback or some such. Yeah, And that's that's a good rule of thumb actually, Like and most of Alaska's fish or east I think over the long term, um about you know, maybe forty six of the returning adults and these things only spawn one so they're they're being harvested before they ever have a chance to spawn. But every every single year, every single run you know about you know, roughly half give or take of the population is killed before as a chance to spawn. Um. But that's sort of a testament to the productivity of these fish because this has been going on, you know, in Alaska for over a hundred years in most places, and those fishes keep coming back and coming back and there. You know, they're at um. You know, populations are for the most part doing great, you know, so I'm so happy to hear the salmon are doing all right generally. Yeah. Yeah, Pacific Northwest is a bit of another story, but it's a totally different story. Wasn't there a closure on king fishing to retain the Oh, there's a lot of that going around. Yeah, I mean should remember specifically when we were out at you because they couldn't tell because there's kings up here that belonged down there. Yeah, it was something I don't want them getting there's so few down there. They didn't want whatever ones might happen to be running around up here getting killed when they might be turning up down there later. Getting that right, well, they The sport and commercial seasons were closed for king salmon in Southeast Alaska starting in August last year. UM. There are a handful of the trans boundary rivers in Southeast Alaska, like the Keene and the Taku. When the eunuch Um rivers that drain from British Columbia into mainland Southeast Alaska, UM, the king salmon runs and all those rivers are in pretty bad shape right now, and so they closed the fisheries in southeast maximize return. Yes, yes, and a lot of those a lot of fish feeds sort of locally. So you know, even by the time August came around last year, most of that year spawners were already or if not all of them already in the river. But I think that they were closing that to preserve you know, immature fish eating in that um sort of coastal southeast. And then that alludes to that sort of Canada US interplay of salmon management. Yeah, there are some there are some treaties on those rivers too. I believe like just because it flows out in your country doesn't mean that you can run the show. Yeah, you can run the show when we need to our fish, to have our fish across the border and come back. There's a lot of habitat in Canada. Yeah, all right. Do you have any lot of things that you wanted to wedge in that we didn't get to Um No, I had a had a list, but we got to them. Yeah. Really, where's your list on my head? And you guys are good? Yeah, I'm ready for a taco fish taco kind of tacos. We have uh moves. But we do have some a little bit of halibut and rock fish we can heat up though, left over from a couple of nights ago. No salmon, nope, man, I got very little I have left in the freezer. Man, I'd like to have that stuff gone. To get it gone. Man. Yeah, you can sit on a piece of deer meat for a couple of years, but same, I like to get in and out. Yes, yes, all right, thanks for joining.