Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Copper River Red Salmon turns YELLOW!!!

It seemed to get more color the longer it was in the sun.

Closeup of a yellow Copper River Red Salmon

Tim Redington holding a yellow Copper River Red

Yellow salmon next to normal looking red salmon

Tim found this yellow Copper River Red in the fishwheel this morning. He says he's never seen a red salmon turn yellow in all his 50 some years of commerical fishing in Alaska. Doubt we'll be eating this one. Haven't seen the inside yet, don't know if the flesh is yellow too. Tim plans to hand it over to a Fish and Game biologist, maybe they can tell us what happened to it. Pretty weird, and also pretty scary since SO many people and dogs depend on this fish to survive.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like a female humpy to me.

Pete

Niki Raapana said...

Somebody from fish and game called Tim yesterday and told him this isn't the first one of these caught this summer. Maybe it's a new breed. Where did you see female humpies of this color?

Anonymous said...

Guess I never did. The bottom picture makes it appear to have that shape. Maybe this thing is related to the Atlantic salmon that have escaped from the commercial pens in B.C.

Pete

Ivan Doumenc said...

Yes. Unfortunately BC fish farms are a smoking gun in those yellow salmon. We are getting them in BC in the Fraser river. Please read Alexandra Morton's blog below.

http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2011/10/open-letter-to-fisheries-and-oceans-canada.html

(I'd like to continue this conversation and share observations and notes with you. You can find me on Facebook: Ivan Doumenc, born in France, living in Vancouver)

In solidarity
Ivan Doumenc

Alexandra Morton said...

Can someone give me the name and contact for the Fish and Game person who received this fish? In reviewing the salmon farm disease record there is reference to this mystery syndrome. There is reference to it looking similar to a virus seen in coho in Chilean fish farms.

my email is gorbuscha@gmail.com

Thank you I hope we can figure this out

Alexandra Morton said...

Can someone give me the contact for the person at Fish and Game who received this fish? At the Cohen Inquiry into the collapse of the Fraser sockeye we learned the salmon farmers are trying to figure out a syndrome that is turning farmed Chinook yellow. There are farm salmon disease reports on symptoms similar to a virus in Chilean coho fish farms, that turns the fish yellow....

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17169103

I feel this is an urgent situation as yellow pink salmon and Chinook are showing up dead without spawning.

I can be contacted at gorbuscha@gmail.com