Their preliminary work, presented in May at a symposium on ocean acidification at the University of Washington, documents yet another way carbon dioxide emissions are messing with the world's oceans.
Chase Williams, a postdoc at the University of Washington, said changing ocean chemistry is making it harder for salmon to smell danger. Salmon use smell to navigate, to hunt and to avoid predators.
"They can smell predators themselves,” Williams said. "They can also smell a compound that’s released when a predator is eating one of their schooling mates.”
“In normal conditions, they would avoid the scent of danger,” he said.
But thanks to decades of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel use and deforestation, conditions aren’t normal anymore. In addition to trapping heat in sea and sky, the added CO2 has changed the chemistry of the oceans, making them more acidic.
In laboratory tanks, as scientists cranked up the carbon dioxide, turning the water more acidic, young salmon stopped avoiding the scent of predation. The UW and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers had added a compound that damaged salmon skin exudes as a warning signal to nearby fish whenever one member of a school is attacked.
Conditions as acidic as coho in this experiment faced are not common yet in the world's oceans, but some places, including Puget Sound's Hood Canal and upwelling zones off the Northwest coast, do experience them occasionally.
Seawater is already acidic enough at times in Northwest waters to harm oysters' ability to form shells.\
http://kuow.org/post/salmon-are-losing-their-sense-smell-thanks-carbon-emissions
there is also a nice video showing salmon smolts moving into predator water vs moving into safe water. there is also a ton of science that shows washington state losing 7.9 million chinook smolts every year to seals