|
|
|
|
Raining Fish
Wed Mar 23, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Salmon swim in the sea. Rain falls from the sky. So why on earth are scientists at the
Pacific Marine Environmental Lab studying Alaska salmon populations by flying into
torrential rainstorms? Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook.
The answer, says PMEL research meteorologist Nick Bond, has to do with a
fascinating connection between fresh water runoff, turbulent ocean currents, and the
well-being of young Alaskan salmon. Bond explains that, after a series of really big
storms in the Gulf of Alaska, there is so much runoff that a freshwater lens forms on
top of the ocean's denser salt water. The contrast between these liquid layers
generates oceanic instability in much the same way that storms brew in the
atmosphere from collisions between warm and cold air masses. And for some reason
that scientists don't fully fathom, pink salmon seem to thrive when the ocean is
churned up -- in other words, when the weather is stormy. The numbers speak for
themselves: During the wet period of the late 1970s through the early 1990s, Alaska's
annual pink salmon catch was around 70 million a year, almost seven times the
annual catch during the relatively dry spell from the 1950s through the mid
1970s.
Up in Alaska, everything is on a gigantic scale, including the weather. A "routine" storm
can dump over 11 inches of rain a day on the coastal mountains. In their next Alaskan
jaunt, Bond and colleagues plan to fly into really juicy coastal storms while
simultaneously dropping sensors into the ocean. Once air and sea readings are
combined with salmon data, the results promise to be spectacular, putting
researchers in the pink.
The Weather Notebook is funded by Subaru and The National Science Foundation.
|
|
