What shapes much of the conversation around hatchery, recovery and many of our fisheries issues has been the dramatic decline in marine smolt to adult survivals; especially for Puget Sound stocks.

In the last 40 years the information I can dig up show that for steelhead, coho, and Chinook the fish returning to Puget Sound have seen an 80 to 90% decline in that smolt to adult survival. That survival decline appears to be occurring at significantly accelerated rates than that of the ocean as a whole.

Those declines not only limits the returns from given hatchery releases but also the success of wild escapements. In addition those poor returns negate or limits the benefits from freshwater restoration work.

As interesting aside to the whole decline of Puget Sound smolt to adult survivals has been that with at least the coho and steelhead that decline occurred first or happened faster in the South Sound but now is a PS wide program.

Curt