Acoustic observations of walleye pollock (Gadus chalcogrammus) migration across the US-Russia boundary in the northwest Bering Sea

Abstract

The degree to which walleye pollock (Gadus chalcogrammus, hereafter pollock) move between the US and Russian zones of the Bering Sea is a key source of uncertainty for fisheries management. To study transboundary migrations across the US–Russia maritime boundary and explore how climate variability might influence these migrations, four seafloor-mounted echosounder moorings were deployed from July 2019 to August 2020 in the northwestern Bering Sea. The observations indicated that a substantial amount of pollock moves between the US and Russia seasonally, with a period of southeast movement into the US as winter as sea ice forms and northwest movement into Russia in early summer as waters warm. Over the deployment period, 2.3-times more pollock backscatter moved into the US zone in fall and winter than exited the subsequent spring and summer. We hypothesize that the difference in the net movement between regions was driven by pollock moving farther into Russia during the historically warm conditions at the start of deployment period and reduced northwest return migration the following summer when temperatures were relatively cooler. This supports the hypothesis that temperature affects pollock distribution, and that continued warming will lead to a larger proportion of the stock in Russian waters.