Fisheries and Human Impact on Puget Sound
The Puget Sound runs along the northeastern coast of Washington state. It is made up of a mixed estuarine environment and complex waterways (United States Environmental Protection Agency). Fishing is a main industry in the Puget Sound area. It accounts for more than $100 million in the state of Washington’s economy (Radtke, 2011). Fisheries are the study of the ecology of fish in a given environment. In oceanography it is defined as ecological organization of a biome, community, population, or species (Govoni, 2005). There are many different sectors of fisheries to study. For example, abundance and distribution of different fishes, human impact, and the study of the physical processes are difference …show more content…
In 2000 the Puget Sound Technical Recovery Team (TRT) began to come up with a species recovery plan. There are twenty-two known populations that contain Chinook salmon. A population is a group of fish that only reproduce with fish of their own population to a certain degree. This interbreeding should not be consistent to be a population but does vary depending on the size of the population how much of an isolated population it really is. These populations are considered an evolutionarily significant unit. Some of these inhabit the North and South Fork Nooksack River, Lower and upper Skagit River, Cascade River, Lower and Upper Sauk River, Suiattle River, North and South Fork Stillaguamish River, and many others. Based on recent studies, there were sixteen additional populations of Chinook Salmon that are now extinct. This is fairly new data, and is likely the Chinook salmon population dwindled in the past 200 years. This population modification is due to human changes in the watersheds in the Hood Canal, Central and South Puget Sound, and the Strait of Georgia. For independent species such as the Chinook salmon geographical boundaries are very important because they need migratory barriers, and when theses are skewed salmon’s reproductive process in effected (Ruckelshaus et al. …show more content…
Like the Chinook salmon, the Hood Canal Summer Chum salmon are threatened. Unlike the Chinook salmon, the Hood Canal Summer Chum is approaching their recovery rate whereas the Chinook populations are actually decreasing. Many of the spawning populations of summer chum salmon inhabit the waters of the Hood Canal and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. From years 1995 to 2005 ranged 38–74% of the population in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and 16–49% in the Hood Canal population were hatchery-originated fish. All hatchery-origin summer chum in the two regions are now marked. This allows their distinction from co-occurring natural fish (Sands et al.