Aunty is correct. What we are seeing in the form of increasing returns of summer chum throughout Hood Canal is the successes of hatchery supplementation programs aimed at increasing the number of summer chum on the spawning grounds... and to that extent the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Quilcene Hatchery and staff that work there are to be commended. They have done their job well. As have all of the folks engaged in summer chum supplementation programs.

Now, the trick is to get these originally wild, but hatchery bred summer chum to reproduce with success in the wild. In other words, the spawners that we see all over the Quilcene River today need to produce another generation, another healthy adult return, before we can claim a success story for hatchery supplementation, used as a tool to recover depleted stocks or populations.