Seattle Coho salmon run a fraction of normal
By Michelle Esteban
Dec 2, 2010 at 5:10 PM PST
ISSAQUAH, Wash. — More than 30,000 local Coho salmon have mysteriously disappeared. They didn’t return to the Ballard Locks or local hatcheries, and local fish specialists can’t figure out what happened. This year’s Coho salmon run is so low that the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery has extended its Coho capture, hoping for some late comers. Hatchery foreman John Kugen usually stops looking for Coho by mid-November, but this year, he’s hoping for stragglers. But on Thursday, only four females showed. “We usually handle about 15,000 Coho, and this year we’ve had 475 show up at the hatchery,” Kugen said. The numbers have made it impossible for the hatchery to reach its goal of 1.2 million eggs. “We’re wondering where are our Coho. Where did they go? Nobody knows,” said Gestin Suttle, executive director of Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery (FISH). Suttle said in a typical year, 60 percent of the Coho that swim through the Ballard locks make their way to Issaquah Creek and into the hatchery. “Usually the salmon are so full in the creeks it looks like you could walk across their backs,” he said. But the Coho were a no-show in Ballard, too. Only 3,600 Coho made it through the Locks. The norm is 10 times that amount. “Everybody is shrugging their shoulders,” Suttle said. “It’s a huge mystery.” No one knows for sure what happened to the Coho, but there are some theories floating around the hatchery. The experts think the fish may have been eaten by bass, swallowed by kingfisher. Some believe the water was too warm due to El Nino, or upwelling – the rising of deeper, colder water lacking oxygen – may have been a factor. …
Where go our Coho? Salmon count at fraction of typical season
Duhh…The HUMANITY is domestic[not wild] and stupid to believe what it is told by psychosocial manipulation programs offered by paid experts and hope addicted volunteers. Soylent green will of course replace the vanished fish runs that fed the tribes which formerly shared the natural wildlife among its totemic brother animals. Does not mean the universe is godless, quite the opposite shows that the god is just.