Over the past five years, scientists and researchers from Simon Fraser University have been trying to better understand changes to habitat, salmon and the impact of climate change throughout the Skeena Watershed.

SFU biological sciences Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Michael Price has been leading the research and recently published a study showing how juvenile salmon in Northwest B.C. have adapted to climate change over the past 100 years. Some juvenile salmon are growing faster than they did 100 years ago due to climate change by the warming of deep, glacial-fed lakes that seem to becoming more productive over time.

Price and his colleagues paper was published in the journal Global Change Biology, and found that the annual freshwater growth of juvenile salmon is substantially higher in recent years than it was a century ago, by about 35 per cent. 

Today we sit down with Dr. Price to find out how this work was undertaken and what this means for future of Skeena Salmon.