Marine Survival Study

Since 2021, the Tulalip Tribes, Long Live the Kings, USGS and partners have led a comprehensive annual purse seine juvenile fish sampling survey conducted throughout the Sound. The Project is called the Puget Sound Juvenile Salmon and Herring Monitoring Program, which is a continuing project under the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project (SSMSP; see www.marinesurvivalproject.com). The SSMSP is an extensive US-Canada joint monitoring and research effort involving 60+ participating agencies and entities engaged with fishery resource management, monitoring, and research in the Salish Sea. The Project’s mission is to better understand what is causing salmon and steelhead marine survival problems in Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia (collectively, the Salish Sea).

Juvenile salmon and zooplankton monitoring were identified as the primary, essential “core” monitoring gaps needing to be filled when more than 90 scientists, convened at the beginning of the SSMSP, determined that the leading hypothesis for the decline in Salish Sea-origin juvenile Chinook and coho marine survival since the 1980s is a lack of food availability due to changes in the physical environment from large-scale effects (e.g. climate change) and regional inputs (e.g., pollution, etc.).

We are confident that our collaborative monitoring and research program is the exact approach needed at the right time to get to the bottom of the problems we are having in Puget Sound that are affecting our salmon and steelhead as well as the Tribes’ signature species, the orca whale, and all of the species below it in the food chain. This includes plankton at its basis, and all the way upwards, affecting our crab, forage fish, seabirds, marine mammals, and many other species. Understanding the effects of climate change and local pollution on these resources is essential to protecting our natural resources and the Tribes’ Treaty Rights that depend on them.

Contact

• Mike Crewson

  Salmon Enhancement Program Manager