Fine-scale habitat use by juvenile Chinook Salmon in the Salish Sea

Juvenile Pacific Salmon survival in the Salish Sea has declined dramatically since the 1980s. Our work is part of the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project (SSMSP), an initiative which seeks to understand this decline. We have been developing an economical, small vessel-based method to study how juvenile Chinook Salmon use their habitat in more detail than was previously possible. We are also developing methods to identify high quality juvenile salmon habitat using freely available satellite images. We propose to synthesize the information we are collecting, and combine it with the work of other SSMSP partners, to reveal how habitat use influences juvenile Chinook Salmon growth and their risk of being eaten by predators. The Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF) is the Canadian SSMSP lead agency. Our work will benefit the PSF by contributing to the key SSMSP objective of identifying primary factors controlling juvenile salmon survival in the Salish Sea.

Faculty Supervisor:

Francis Juanes

Student:

William Duguid

Partner:

Pacific Salmon Foundation

Discipline:

Biology

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Program: