Several years back, when we had the large salmon returns, there was a baby boom. In the last few years, with the dismal runs, mainly blamed on the ocean conditions, there has been a bit of a die off. So, is this current concern a short term panic? As stated above, there are more now than in 1976. The current population, it appears, should be able to produce around 9 babies a year. It seems with a little help, they could recover to new highs fairly easy. The 1800 population was estimated to be around 200. Considering that 46 were captured in the 1970's, it should not be that surprising that numbers are down. I would guess they did not target the older orca's, which would have greatly limited the breeding number. With just a little help, this population has lots of potential to bounce back. I have a feeling that the present concern about raising Chinook numbers may not help, as these fish will not be heavily present during the spring. Stopping the harvest of forage fish and helping to increase there number and reducing local predation by seals and sea lions may be a much smarter approach.