Whats interesting to me is that I have been watching this whole fish loss vs pinnipeds gain thing for about 20 years now and I can't help but wonder if this had always been going on but without notice up until the point at which the fish populations crashed overall. For example there seemed to be a balance at one point where pinnipeds foraged mostly outside of these rivers because there was "enough" fish out there. Now we see them feeding at the base of fish ladders or in rivers like the Sandy and also taking them off the anglers hook for those not educated enough to "keep the net down" during the salmon runs. There has always been a ton of predation on the fish... Invasive fish such as bass, walleye, and the native northern sqauwfish which all thrive in the warmer waters below the dams.. Caspian turns, development, warming water temps, gill nets... ect..ect... The list goes on but now that the fish are more or less gone the pinnipeds seem to be feeding in desperation... That said I think the blame ultimately has to be turned at fisheries management or possibly environmentalists with their hatchery lawsuits... I wonder if they realize that when they get what they want "no brats" that the few remaining wild fish will be whats left for the huge amounts of predators to feed on.. One way or another we let this all slip to this point regardless of if we had chosen to keep planting brats or move to a wild fish only model. I realize there are many opinions and models we could go with from here on out but to me it seems that everyone and everything is suffering and fighting over the remaining fish. Yes I know I am missing a lot here that many could educate me personally on and I ofc welcome that.. I guess that's just what the overall change in the last 2 decades or more looks like to me ><,>