Thanks, Larry. That was my thoughts on the short term consequences. In the long term everything does balance out, but the damage to a specific run could already been done.

Another major concern of what could be occurring in the sound is that the effect of large releases from hatcheries on the Nisqually, Minter Creek, Chambers Creek, Puyallup, Deschutes and the Squaxin Tribe, along with the current large numbers of Pink and Chum smolts naturally occurring , is causing an artificially high number of predators to survive. If one outward migration comes through alone and in low numbers, it could easily be decimated by these predators, while the bigger hatchery releases would survive fairly good. Very little could be done to prop up these little runs, other than finding some way to create a higher food base during their outward migrations or trying to time them to go out with other migrations that have higher numbers.

It seems odd to me that the smolts released were so easily zoned in on by the predator base (if that is what ultimately killed off the steelhead). In a normally balanced ecosystem I don't think that would happen.