Orcasphere

Elisabeth Duffy*, David Beauchamp
Juvenile salmon are moving through Puget Sound (PS) from April-July.  By end of July most have made it to the deep ocean.  Percent of fish from hatcheries is about 50% in N PS and 90% in S PS.
Nearshore fish comunity: herring and perch up north, hatchery salmon dominate in the south; salmon [...]

This just in from salmonuniversity.com:
Forecasts are great for the Queen Charlotte’s and the Nushagak in 2009
Canadian Fisheries claims the water temperature is the coldest in 11 years and the ocean conditions are perfect for setting up huge runs of returning Chinook and Coho for 2009.  In 2005 the Nushagak had over 300k returning Chinook – [...]

It will be fascinating to see how this money is actually spent. The article mentions using part of the $30M to retire licenses from commercial troll fishers.
I’m guessing the $15M ($7.5M from Canada and the same from the U.S.) will be helping to replenish the PSC portfolio. This could mean renewed funding in [...]

This clipping from the NOAA/NWFSC Marine Mammal Program shows that southern residents are increasing the source level of their S1 calls by about 1dB for every decibel increase of the ambient noise level. Counts of vessels within 1km of the hydrophone correlate with the ambient noise levels.
While the ecological consequences of this behavioral change [...]

J, K, and members of L pod have been down in central and south Puget Sound quite a bit thus far this November and December.  The nice sighting maps at Orca Network show they’ve been sighted as far south as Seattle and Vashon on 12/2 and 12/7.  In comparison, here are the days in past [...]

After hearing Sandra O’Neill talk about how resident Chinook are so much more contaminated with PCBs and PDBEs than offshore Chinook, I’m wondering if WDFW shouldn’t encourage harvesting of all blackmouth in a manner that maximizes the sequesteration of bioaccumulating toxins in landfills and/or humans.  Maybe we could limit recreational, commerical, and tribal catch of [...]

The funds from the Pacific Salmon Commission could be a great catalyst of research about the behavior and ecology of the Chinook and chum salmon that southern residents appear to prefer. This decrease in endowment coupled with the recent news of losses in the SRKW population — possibly related to starvation — add up [...]

Here’s my first attempt at live-blogging… 8:40-9:20 a.m. from the University of Washington’s Water Seminar.
8:40 Key findings of his and Lisa Stiffler’s investigation of the Duwamish estuary:

Pollution is historic an ongoing; diversity is down; everyone is contributing to the problem (e.g. run-off)
Some chemicals lethal; some not (Cu not good for young salmon; first run-off flush [...]

Authored by: Captain Todd Shuster and Dr. Scott Veirs
A new type of boat will study the orcas and their environment this fall. The Gato Verde is a 13-meter (42-foot) sailing catamaran that recently became the first biodiesel-electric charter vessel on the West Coast. Last winter, dual 27-horsepower diesel engines were replaced with [...]