A decades-long decline in salmon in the Yukon River has reached a crisis this year, forcing harvest closures and prompting emergency shipments of salmon from other regions of Alaska to river residents who are otherwise facing food shortages.

Starting last week, regional residents reported numerous dead seabirds washing up on regional beaches. Alaska Sea Grant Agent Gay Sheffield said there were carcasses of murres, puffins, shearwaters and a kittiwake starting on July 28; in Golovin, Solomon, Nome and a dead Little Diomede.

Poaching and climate change might be the reasons why more than 1,200 migrating animals did not make it across the wide Arctic waterway.

Chum returns are the lowest on record, leaving communities with empty freezers and uncertainty about getting through the winter.

"While on a field trip for work, we stopped at the beach and you can notice hundreds of dead clams and star fish littering the beach."

In recent years, we have observed the salmon arriving at our territory along the Skeena River later than normal and in fewer numbers. The total number of wild sockeye (Oncorhynchus nerka) returning to the Skeena River have decreased by 69% in comparison to historical stocks.

"The first wave of dead mussels washed ashore on July 14th, possibly earlier but this was the first report we received. I took the pictures included in my LEO observation on July 16th, and the temperatures were only just then beginning to climb into the upper 70s and lower 80s."

As temperatures near and surpass triple digits, many reservoirs in California's Central Valley have diverted more water to cities and farmers during the drought, making rivers shallower and too hot for the fish to develop from eggs, a process which can take at least 60 days to complete. To combat the poor river conditions in the Central Valley, some fish preservation organizations have tried to save the salmon population by launching large scale trucking operations to transport millions of salmon to the San Pablo Bay, San Francisco Bay and other fish farms where they are more likely to survive.

The hordes of fish were killed by a red tide, a large "bloom" of toxic algae that appears on Florida's Gulf Coast about once a year. Experts say the bloom shouldn't be happening right now.

The prospects are dim for this summer’s Norton Sound commercial fishing and crabbing seasons.

In Malahat Drive in BC, an extraordinary heat wave, combined with low tides during the middle of the day resulted in the die off of possibly billions of intertidal invertebrates along the coast of British Columbia and Washington State.

A record-shattering heat wave June 26-28 coincided with some of the year's lowest tides on Puget Sound. The combination was lethal for millions of mussels, clams, oysters, sand dollars, barnacles, sea stars, moon snails, and other tideland creatures exposed to three afternoons of intense heat.

"River is running bank full with all gravel bars and low islands underwater."

The Kuskokwim River king salmon run does not look particularly strong this year, but chum numbers look even worse. Historically, around 60% of the salmon in the river at this point in the season would be chum or sockeye, but right now Bethel Test Fishery numbers show that just over 20% of the salmon are.

My unprofessional opinion is that climate change is affecting these endemic roses and that they are in peril.

The black substance was staining the feet of people at the beach, prompting one local resident to alert state officials.

“The midpoint of the Anchor River king salmon run was extremely late. These fish are really having some odd, unprecedented run timing and behavior."

The whale had earlier been spotted stranded.

The community of Gambell fought a distemper outbreak among its dog population this spring and managed to squash the epidemic in its early onset. Distemper is a deadly disease that can afflict dogs and wildlife alike and also has been documented in the North Atlantic to jump from dogs to marine mammals like seals.

The beluga had a ruptured intestine probably related to parasites, which were found in the whale’s abdomen, lungs and kidneys, Burek said. The parasites likely led to an entanglement within a section of the intestines, leading it to rupture. “Very unusual,” Burek said. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”