The fishing trip to Gaiakulpen in Vesterelva offered a real surprise to friends Njord Lindgård and Tobias Holm (13).

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.

Extreme drought in the west means that households with private waterworks are out of water. Elvar's dried up. "The situation is very serious," he says.

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

"My husband and I have been dipnetting on the Kasilof since 2014. This year we noticed more small fish than usual and all but ~5 of the 35 fish we caught had parasites."

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 most common pod of southern resident killer whales who migrate to the Salish Sea during the summer have not been seen for than 100 days, marking a highly unusual absence from their historic summer hunting ground, according to researchers.

Tim Sands, an Alaska Department of Fish and Game area management biologist, said he is hopeful the strong run throughout Bristol Bay will continue next year.

On July 14, a rare 100-pound opah fish was found on the Oregon coast. The 3.5 foot 100 pound fish washed up at Sunset Beach, and was reported to the Seaside Aquarium.

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.

West Coast fish and forests are in greater peril than ever as the B.C. government issues widespread drought warnings after a record-breaking heat wave and an explosion of wildfires across the province.

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.

"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.

“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 Karuk Tribe has declared a climate emergency as the Klamath River Basin has seen the worst conditions in history with very low precipitation and...

Residents note significant changes in the Christiansen Lake ecosystem since 2019. This includes fewer nesting birds, fish, and mammals around the lake, while the leech population has increased along with the occurrence of algal blooms.

Slimy sculpins (Cottus cognatus) are small, nocturnal, bottom-dwelling fish that lack a swim bladder to help them stay bouyant in the water. Their size and habitat allow them to easily avoid fishing gear designed for salmon.

Early snowmelt and low precipitation have led to low river water levels on the southern Seward Peninsula. Low water levels may be a contributing factor in observations of poor fishing, and poor fish health, along the western coast of Alaska.