<title>Spawning migration and intraspecies differentiation of pink salmon from northwestern Sakhalin waters</title>

Abstract

Pacific salmon fishery near the northwestern Sakhalin coast is based on fish spawning both in the island and continental rivers. Salmon fishery near the Sakhalin coast of Amur Estuary has significantly lost contact with the main salmon rivers of the region. Pink salmon is the most abundant salmon species of the region rivers. Biology of the northwestern Sakhalin pink salmon is less studied of all the fishery regions on the island. So far, their migratory ways from feeding and wintering areas to the spawning rivers have not been ascertained. The results of monitoring for pink salmon have shown that by some biological indices, commercial-statistic data, and also by the data of satellites NOAA-10, NOAA-12, NOAA-14, their commercial catches near the northwestern Sakhalin are formed by fish groups migrating both through the Amur Estuary from the south, and through the Sakhalin Bay from the north. The base of spawning fish in rivers of northwestern Sakhalin is formed by the summer pink salmon migrating from the north. A preliminary computation of distinguished pink salmon groups (summer southern and northern autumn) shows a ratio 0.1:5.7:1 in odd years and 1:2:1 in even years.© (2002) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.