Making Lake Washington dirty again won’t fix the Sockeye problem.

Sockeye do best with a 3-4 year cycle of high and low abundance. This allows for predator and prey abundances to fluctuate which produces the typical 4 year high/low cycle of high Sockeye returns. The hatchery in Lake Washington should mimic that cycle instead of dumping high numbers of sockeye every year which sustains a continuous abundance of high predator and low abundance of preferred forage species. The current program obviously is resulting in a long-term low return situation each year.

There are a huge number of introduced species in Lake Wa. Sockeye do best where the mix of interacting species is low. This high introduced species situation creates a complex system that is very difficult to manage. Not much that can be done about that.

So…..My suggestion would be to try releasing high numbers of hatchery sockeye every 4 years, and release few or none following the high release years. This would mimic how Sockeye do best naturally.