Each year, Skookumchuck sends roughly 100,000 juvenile coho salmon and 100,000 steelhead smolts down the Skookumchuck and Chehalis Rivers to Grays Harbor, on Washington\u2019s west coast. Most of these fish are caught in fishers\u2019 nets or eaten by predators. But each year, an average of 3,100 adult fish return and are recaptured by the hatchery and used to breed the next generation.<\/p>\n
Yet the SRKWs, a subpopulation of killer whales that specialize in eating fish<\/a>, strongly favor chinook salmon over coho and steelhead. They will eat coho, though they much prefer the big, fatty chinooks.<\/p>\n So, Washington\u2019s legislature is considering a bill that would spend US $1.55-million in state funds to raise an extra 10 million chinook salmon annually at six state hatcheries, including Skookumchuck, in the hopes that it will help save the whales.<\/p>\n As of last December, the three family groups of SRKWs\u2014known as J, K, and L pods\u2014had a combined total of 76 whales, down from their most recent peak of 98 in 1995. Scientists blame a range of factors for their decline, from malnutrition to environmental degradation to exposure to toxins.<\/p>\n Representative Brian Blake, the Democratic lawmaker who put forward the bill, hopes that if the hatcheries release 10 million chinook smolts, maybe 100,000 to 200,000 will survive, returning to the coast as adults in time to be eaten by the remaining SRKWs. So far, Blake\u2019s bill has strong bipartisan support.<\/p>\n \u201cI kept hearing stories about J pod and the lack of salmon, and that salmon is one of the factors in turning that around,\u201d says Blake, who represents the Grays Harbor area, which is a regular fish-hunting area for the killer whales.<\/p>\n \u201cScientists say if something is not done immediately, these whales are gone,\u201d says Democratic State Senator Kevin Ranker, who has put forward other killer whale-related bills that are also under consideration.<\/p>\n Donna Sandstrom, executive director of the nonprofit organization the Whale Trail, says the whales\u2019 situation seems dire. \u201cWe\u2019re perhaps witnessing their last chapter on Earth,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Robert Allan, who heads the southwestern Washington branch of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, says if the bill is approved, it should be possible for state hatcheries to accommodate the extra 10 million chinook smolts, though additional facilities might need to be built.<\/p>\n But a much bigger question, Allan says, is whether the extra salmon would actually help the migratory SRKWs. Salmon follow a complex life cycle<\/a> in which they spend several years at sea developing into adults before returning to their natal streams to breed. For the adult salmon to actually end up in the killer whales\u2019 paths, the fish would need to return to the coast in the right place at the right time.<\/p>\n
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