There are some wierd things going on in Hood Canal - we have some a couple of rivers with 90+ percent of the watershed in federal ownership and most of that in the park, with some of the finest and most consistant water quality and flows anywhere, and the estuaries of these river are owned by the state and are also nearly pristine with ample wetlands. Looks like ideal salmonid rearing habitat, yet no salmon or steelhead seem to be able to repopulate them.

There is one species which has, however - harbor seals. There are so many in Dosewallips state park that beaches are closed to shellfish harvesting due to high coliforms deposited by seals. Seals have no natural enemys other than orcas, and orcas no longer enter Hood Canal, likely because they are deterred from swimming under the Hood Canal Bridge for some reason - either the forest of anchor cables looking like a net to them, or the noise of traffic or creaking pontoons transferred into the water and fouling up their sonar - for whatever reason they refused to enter the Canal after the bridge was built, until 1981 when the bridge sank. They sure nailed the seals for a couple years after that - I watched it myself from a cabin near Eldon - and in 1985 we had such an amazing return of hatchery steelhead to the Duck that it was totally beyond belief and completely out of line with anything I have seen before or since in 30+ years of fishing that river. When the bridge went back in, the orcas stayed out, and the seal population skyrocketed again after that.

Now seals alone are not going to be able to wipe out a run of returning fish - they fill up too quick and most adult salmon and steelhead get away. What I think is happening that is damaging the runs is that they are feeding on smolts, and particularly big, confused hatchery steelhead smolts. Seals feed heavily on schools of baitfish, so they certainly can do the same to schools of salmon smolts. And in the spring feeding opportunities are limited - no big runs of salmon, herring and surf smelt have already spawned, etc. Those schools of foot long hatchery hot dogs are just the thing to fill the freezer as far as a seal is concerned.

None of this is addressed by closing a fishery. It is made even worse by dumping more eggbox fry into the river to create dense schools easily exploited by predators. And this is just conjecture anyway - brought up as another theory to explain the sorry HC situation. It is interesting that WSDOT is planning on replacing the Hood Canal bridge soon - what would it take for them to consider making it orca-passable?