Updates/Blog
2025 Chum Salmon Studies and Outreach
2025 Yukon River drainage chum salmon fieldwork and outreach WCS Fish Ecologist Kevin Fraley drove the Dalton and Parks Highways in August and September 2025 to conduct fieldwork relating to a chum salmon pre-spawning mortality research project. Read more about the project background and goals here. This consisted of four packraft and on-foot trips to…
July 2025 Point Hope, AK Rusting Rivers Fieldwork
July 2025 Point Hope, AK Rusting Rivers Fieldwork WCS Fish Ecologist Kevin Fraley and volunteers traveled to Point Hope, Alaska in July 2025 to conduct fieldwork relating to our Kukpuk River Rusting Rivers/Arctic grayling research project. This consisted of two fly-in, float out packraft trips to collect fish samples and sediment for testing. Read more…
January and April 2025 Arctic Slope Fieldwork
Jan and April 2025 Arctic Slope Fieldwork In 2025, focus has returned to oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge of Alaska. This is an area with limited freshwater winter habitat for fish, which are vulnerable to disturbances and can be subject to mass mortality (see more information about this). However, the…
July 2024 Brooks Range Fieldwork
In July, a WCS fisheries field crew visited three rivers in the Brooks Range of Alaska to collect fish, sediment, aquatic vegetation, and aquatic invertebrate samples to assess concentrations of contaminants. These rivers, the Alatna, John, and Koyukuk remain largely undeveloped, except for the Dalton Highway and Trans-Alaska pipeline adjacent to the Koyukuk River. This…
June 2024 Cape Krusenstern National Monument Lagoons Fieldwork
During summer 2024, one visit to Cape Krusenstern National Monument coastal lagoons was undertaken by WCS to continue our long-term monitoring project with the National Park Service and Native Village of Kotzebue. WCS Fish Ecologist Kevin Fraley and a technician flew via bush aircraft from Kotzebue, AK to Cape Krusenstern National Monument and conducted fish…
February and April 2024 Arctic Slope Fish Overwintering Fieldwork
February Trip In February 2024, WCS Fish Ecologist Kevin Fraley and two Alaska Department of Fish and Game Division of Sport Fish staff members traveled to the Shaviovik River spring site where WCS personnel had witnessed a mass fish dieoff during the winter of 2021-2022. To build on observations and data from that initial discovery,…
2023 Brooks Range Fish Fieldwork
During July-September 2023, the 2-person WCS fisheries crew collected fish from various waterbodies in the Brooks Range mountains of northern Alaska as part of a survey of baseline heavy metal and PFAS (also known as “forever chemicals”) in fish tissues. This baseline survey is necessary to assess current conditions before areas of the Brooks Range…
Summer 2023 Northwest Alaska Coastal Lagoons Fieldwork
In June and August 2023, the 2-person WCS Fisheries crew visited five lagoons within Cape Krusenstern National Monument to conduct water quality measurements, fish abundance and diversity monitoring, and Mysidae samples. It was a challenging field season between a very late spring breakup and logistical issues, but also full of successes. June During the June…
Spring 2023 Arctic Slope Fish Ecology Fieldwork
In early May, a WCS team returned to the site of a fish mass die-off that occurred in 2022, to retrieve water quality monitoring equipment that was placed in December 2022 and ascertain if fish mortality had again occurred. The crew took snowmachines from Franklin Bluffs along the Dalton Highway to and from the fish…
Through-ice sheefish satellite tagging in Kotzebue, AK
WCS Fisheries Ecologist Kevin Fraley and collaborators with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Native Village of Kotzebue, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service worked to catch and tag eighteen adult sheefish through the Kotzebue Sound sea ice with pop-up archival satellite tags (PSAT) in April 2023. This effort…
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Arctic Beringia Fish Ecology 