November 11, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
No habitat in Puget Sound is more valuable to threatened Chinook salmon than nearshore habitat. No habitat is more degraded, either.
Nearshore habitat is shorthand for tidal marsh, wetlands, and river estuaries where land and water combine to support life of all kinds, from shorebirds to juvenile salmon and steelhead. Juvenile Puget Sound Chinook salmon spend their first critical months in saltwater feeding and growing in the sheltered water of nearshore habitat.
Their growth in that pivotal window determines in large part whether they will make it back to rivers as adults to spawn. With nearshore habitat dwindling, most do not.
When reviewing projects, NOAA Fisheries is updating its efforts to avoid further losses of nearshore habitat.
“It is important for projects to have a path forward, while we also need to stem the losses of this habitat that we have already lost so much of,” said Kim Kratz, Assistant Regional Administrator in NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region.
More than 95 percent of the most valuable nearshore habitat in Puget Sound is gone and is especially scarce in the south Sound, according to an analysis by the Puget Sound Nearshore Ecosystem Restoration Project. Scientists described it as a “dramatic change in the historic occurrence [of] these once-prominent nearshore ecosystems.”
Fewer than one percent of Puget Sound Chinook salmon juveniles that migrate to the ocean each year survive to return as adults. That means that already imperiled populations continue to decline. There are also repercussions for other species such as en