A substantial portion of the harbor seals' annual food demands is met by forage fish. Reduce the number of harbor seals and you increase both the availability of forage fish to salmonids as well as reduce the huge loss of Chinook smolt to those same predators. And by reducing that predatory impact it makes efforts to increase Chinook production obtain a bigger bang for the buck. Yes, there is always a concern as to how more returning fish will be managed but that is a somewhat different problem which will only become a factor if we can obtain a significant increase in returning Chinook.

It was beyond frustrating to sit through the Predation group's (a sub-group to the Prey Working Group) and listen to all of the reasons to not recommend some level of culling to the Task Force. There is a clear biological potential to achieve more Chinook for Orcas through culling pinniped populations. I will opine that the goal of providing adequate food for SRKW simply cannot be achieved without reducing the pinniped population within Puget Sound. The question is whether the policy makers and the public are willing to accept what needs to be done.