By KENGO HIYOSHI/ Staff Writer
September 9, 2022 at 17:22 JST
The haul of pink salmon in rivers in Hokkaido has plummeted to roughly one-20th the size of the previous good catch in 2020.
Those in the industry suggest that warmer waters have led to the disappointing number.
“Sea surface temperatures remained above 20 degrees, 5 degrees higher than the average, from mid-July to early August last year,” said Mitsuru Torao, an assistant manager at the Hokkaido Research Organization’s Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Research Institute.
Pink salmon hatched in rivers in Hokkaido spend a whole winter in the sea before returning to the streams between August and October to lay eggs.
A river in Rausu on the Shiretoko Peninsula, eastern Hokkaido, was packed with pink salmon each measuring about 45 to 60 centimeters long on Sept. 8.
Males develop a distinctively humped back during the spawning season, giving the species the nickname “humpback salmon.”
They were accompanied by females, smaller but more rounded during this time of the year, to find a place to spawn.
Fishermen caught 482,775 pink salmon in rivers in Hokkaido between July 25 and Sept. 5 in 2020 and 125,636 during the same period last year, according to the Hokkaido Salmon Propagation Association.
Statistics have shown that good hauls in the area come every other year. But this year’s figure plunged to 23,298 despite expectations for another good catch, an association official said.
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Pink salmon return to a river on the Shiretoko Peninsula, eastern Hokkaido, on Sept. 8. (Kengo Hiyoshi)
