Unusual species in Alaska waters indicate parts of Pacific warming dramatically [View all]

[Blue_In_AK]

http://www.adn.com/article/20140914/unusual-species-alaska-waters-indicate-parts-pacific-warming-dramatically

A giant hotspot in the North Pacific Ocean may help explain why a massive ocean sunfish was spotted in Prince William Sound this month and a skipjack tuna was caught in a gillnet weeks earlier near the mouth of the Copper River, scientists say.

Both species are unusual visitors to Alaska. Steve Moffitt, a research biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Cordova, believes the tuna might be the northernmost ever recorded.

"'Fishes of Alaska' (a 2002 book by Catherine Mecklenburg) has one confirmed documentation caught in a setnet in Yakutat Bay in 1981 and a personal communication that some were caught off southern southeastern Alaska,'' he noted in an email to colleagues.

Yakutat Bay is about 200 miles southeast of where the latest catch was made about 150 miles southeast of Anchorage. Skipjack, the smallest and most common of the commercial tuna species, are normally considered a fish of the tropics.

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