Knowing that several who have posted on this string spent time in the mild little mud puddle called the Bering Sea I thought I might pass on what I witnessed there last fall during the red king crab season.
I'd heard reports from biologists and from cannery officials last summer of a massive algae bloom northwest of the Pribloffs. According to biologists the O2 levels within the affected waters was significantly less than what is normally encountered in the Bering Sea. Cause of the bloom was specualtive, but opinions generally bent towards ocean temperatures rising and related phenomena that I really didn't understand fully. However, one could speculate through the SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess) method that any oxegen dependent creature venturing into a 300-400 square mile patch of this stuff would suffocate in time.

We encountered water last October in the King crab grounds that looked like the glacial turquiose water found behind Ross or Diablo damns in the North Cascades. It was like nothing I'd ever seen in 15 years of fishing on either side of the Aleutians or Bristol Bay. What made me worried was that our pots set in that water mostly came up blank of crab or the cod that sometimes venture into them. Pots set outside of the bloom were doing much better.

Obviously these blooms drift with the weather and tide and I understand occur both north and south of the Aleutian chain. Whether they also effect our andronomous fish I don't know. But it seems that a charging school of fish could find themselve in the middle of oxegen depleted water in a hurry with a good chance of not getting out.

I wonder if this is in direct correlation with the wet/cool or warm/dry pattern? Or is this an event acting independently as a phenomena birthed from global warming etc...?
However, it is another good example of the extreme amount of variables our salmon and steelhead encounter in their ocean travels.