Principal Investigator
Timothy Essington, UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
Co-Principal Investigators
Tessa Francis, University of Washington, Tacoma
Correigh Greene, NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center
Dayv Lowry, Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife
Eric Ward, NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center
Project
Unlike most major U.S. estuaries, Puget Sound has not received the long-term monitoring needed to determine how successful restoration and recovery efforts have been. To evaluate the status of its fish populations requires a comprehensive synthesis of historical data, but such an evaluation has only been conducted for one forage fish,Pacific herring. Much less is known about status and trends for such important species as Pacific hake, cod, walleye pollock and spiny dogfish. This long-term historical assessment of key Puget Sound species will provide the baselines needed to gauge their current status and recovery potential. It will integrate and analyze nine datasets from university, state, federal and salmon-hatchery surveys ranging from 1947 to the present. This will make it possible to consider as never before the relative roles of fishing, population growth and climate change in driving fish losses. Researchers will also gauge the impacts of predation by growing seal and sea lion populations.