Wednesday January 8, 2025
NOAA Fisheries —
There is a new mouth to feed in the coastal waters of the Northwest where juvenile salmon first enter the ocean, and it’s a hungry one.
Over the last two decades large numbers of juvenile sablefish have increasingly spread into coastal waters from central Oregon north to northern Washington. New research published in the journal Marine and Coastal Fisheries shows the influx follows the warming of ocean temperatures off the West Coast. It matches reports of fishing boats catching more small sablefish closer to shore.
The finding means that salmon may face new competition from sablefish at a critical time in their life cycle, which is already at risk from climate change. Adult sablefish live for many years in deep offshore waters along the ocean floor. Juvenile sablefish—like young salmon— first feed and grow along the highest layers of water near the surface that teem with life. Sablefish are voracious eaters, often consuming large prey and lots of it.
“They are around the same size as juvenile salmon, but they can eat bigger prey and much more prey than salmon can at the same size,” said Elizabeth Daly, an ecologist with the joint NOAA-Oregon State University Cooperative Institute for Marine Ecosystem and Resources Studies in Newport, Oregon. She is the lead author of a new paper documenting increased competition between the two species, which both support important commercial fisheries off the West Coast.