Seattle Coho Run Down From 15,000 To 475 This Year

[hatrack]

SSAQUAH, 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, or 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.

EDIT

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/111231954.html

[Duer 157099]

1. Uh oh. "Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish" comes to mind n/t

[glinda]

2. And our asshole politicians just fight about all sorts of other things.

[thereismore]

3. But Sarah said "There's plenty of fish in the sea!". You are lying!!! nt

[Bigmack]

4. It's Issaquah.. and there's lots more going on...

with the salmon in the NW. The tribe just south of us on Hood Canal (West of Puget Sound) has their own hatchery, and they got shitty returns this year.

Year before last, the sockeye salmon from the Fraser River in British Columbia was a disaster...following 2 other low years. 2009 was 1.5 million fish.

This year, that same run of sockeye was over 34 million..

Something weird is going on.