Growing pains? SFU research tracks 100 years of salmon adaptation to climate change

Juvenile salmon in British Columbia are growing larger than they did 100 years ago due to climate change, according to a new Simon Fraser University-led study.

Century-old fish scales are yielding new insights into how salmon populations are responding to climate change in northern B.C., and how maintaining the integrity of freshwater habitats may help salmon adapt to warming temperatures.

SFU biological sciences Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellow Michael Price, with other SFU researchers and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, have used modern genetic tools to analyze fish scales collected from fisheries since 1913 to reconstruct the historical growth of juvenile sockeye in various lakes across the Skeena watershed.