Lecture finds multiple reasons for smaller salmon

As part of the Rainforest Festival, Megan McPhee, with the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, gave a lecture that explained causes of the shrinking size of salmon.

In her presentation, McPhee gave historical trends of salmon sizes, explained some reasons why salmon are getting smaller over the years and consequences of smaller salmon.

In 1981, W.E. Ricker noted that the average weight of pink salmon in British Columbia seine fisheries between 1951 and 1974 decreased by about one pound in that 23 year period. The average weight of troll caught Chinook salmon...