Program on the Environment

The Wild Fish Conservancy wants to identify the original habitat for the summer chum salmons to recover from the low population, which is listed in the Endangered Species Act. It is important to recover the summer chum population because many other species feed off them, recovering them will increase total salmon population in Pacific North West. This method is possible because they collect data from many habitat and looking for the most sustainable one. During my internship, I was helping to collect data on hood canal, and adding data like the fork length and abundances to the huge database, also constructing a report of my finding within the new data and the database. We collect data by riding out to the canal on speed boat to net up salmons. This data may help on finding the best habitat for them to survive in, we do this by using the data to determine growth rate of the for different habitats which is delta, estuary, barrier beach, and bluff black beach, and know that the best growth rate would probably shows which habitat best growth rate for Summer chum. The data supports that barrier beach have the best growth rate overall. This data may help the future studies on the recovery of the salmon population, because the Hood Canal salmons swim down for the canal in the winter and the habitat changes cause by the regime shift causing them to face the danger of extinction.