Variability in scale growth rates of chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) in relation to climate changes in the late 1980s

Fish scales were used to investigate the interannual variability in chum salmon growth rates at specific ages in relation to climatic/environmental changes during the 1980s–1990s. Scales were obtained from adult salmon returning to the east coast of Korea between 1984 and 1998. Assuming proportionality between scale size increments and fish length, distances between scale annuli were regarded as the growth conditions in different habitat areas with respect to the life stages of chum salmon. In estuarine and coastal areas, growth rates of fingerling salmon were higher in the 1990s than in the 1980s. Zooplankton abundance off the east coast of Korea increased after the late 1980s, which may have provided favorable growth conditions for young salmon in the 1990s. Growth of juvenile chum salmon during the first summer (Okhotsk Sea) was relatively stable, and neither SST nor zooplankton biomass fluctuated significantly during the study period. However, in the Bering Sea, salmon growth rates between age-2 and age-4 (i.e. ocean-phase immature salmon) were higher in the 1980s than in the 1990s. Variability in salmon growth in the Bering Sea was correlated to zooplankton biomass. These results suggest that the climate regime shift of 1988/1989 in the subarctic North Pacific affected salmon growth mediated by changes of zooplankton biomass, revealing a bottom-up process.