“Our results suggest that warming is both increasing freshwater habitat and improving early marine survival of pink salmon in the northern Bering Sea,” said Ed Farley, NOAA Fisheries biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, who led the study.

"Sockeye salmon harvest has been pretty constant for the last four years or so, but pink salmon has been oscillating," he said. "We were forecasting almost 70 million pink salmon harvest, and we had 40 million.

Sockeye salmon runs across Alaska were dismal this year. But no one is certain why.

Pink salmon are showing up in unexpected places around the Homer area.

The creeks were so full - I bet the oxygen levels weren't so good for them though.

If Alaska expands how many pink salmon its hatcheries — such as the one in Tutka Bay — produce, will there be unintended consequences that harm Kachemak Bay?

Around the state, biologists are unsure of what led to the lowest pink salmon harvest since the 1970s in a season that led Gov. Bill Walker to seek a disaster declaration from the federal government to bail out beleaguered pink fishermen. “We caught 39 million pinks this year,” said Forrest Bowers, the Commercial Fisheries Division director for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The department forecasted a harvest of 90 million fish between. Bowers said he had to comb records back to 1977 to find a year that bad.

Fishing for pinks has been really up and down the last few years. In 2014 the catch was really low, and then 2015 it was amazing with more than we had ever seen before. This year's pink salmon return again, was really bad.

Drought and high temperatures have dried the creek and caused thousands of pink salmon and Dolly Varden to die before they could spawn. The event raises questions about vulnerability of area salmon streams to climate change, and for local residents food security.

Amazing run of pink salmon.