Besides overfishing, I think the biggest obstacle to the recovery of the chinook is the overabundance of predatory mammals - sealions & seals. We have run off their natural predators - the orcas - and there is nothing controlling their population. We need to establish several orca hatcheries (cloning centers) to correct this imbalance.

you need to be careful there!The way I understand it the local pods only eat fish!The nomadic orca's are the ones that eat mammals?

Having witnessed them in action off the Oregon coast, it the the Great White one that we need a hatchery for! To he11 with the pups, they go for the brood mare and the bulls to boot.

Ever been to wallmart??? More whales there then I'd know what to do with (and they eat just about everything).

Would you clip their adipose fins?
Could we 'bonk one'?, if we baited our hooks with whole salmon...I wonder how difficult it is to cut plug an entire Chinook??

Oh yes one of the worst transactions that our fishery could have done when they sold and wiped out the Orca pod in the south sound. These were seal and sealion eating Orcas and not easily replaced. In fact they still haven't been able to replace them. It appears the only ones left are salmon eaters. In the mean time the seals and sealion population continues to grow in numbers. At least British Columbia has some people willing to keep the seal and sealion numbers down.

Save a fish eat a seal

Slabquest: with all due respect, if you want to blame a predatory mammal for the decline of salmon/steehead, it starts & ends with the two legged variety. Seals & sea-lions have been around for millions of years. They are also very pletiful in the places I go up to each year in Canada, where the Orca population is also doing much better. Yet the salmon stocks are far healthier up there. Fishing declines are a very complex issue, but virtually all of the numerous root causes always point back to how people have screwed it up (dams, logging, development, greed, etc etc). My two cents anyway, will get off my soapbox. No problem here if a seal gets a free salmon lunch, COMMERCIAL NETS, now that's a different matter!!

30-06 shells are cheap.

Do seals and sea lions make good crab food? You bet they do!!

How big of a bonking stick do you need for one of these excuses for a mammal?

They don't look endangeed to me. Lets cull the herd a bit. What do you say?

Lets go down toward the mouth of the Columbia and shoot a few birds as well. You could shoot until your arm falls off. Save the smolts!!!!

For a propper food chain, there are not enough orcas to keep the seal/sea lion population under control. The Navy used to use orca pods as target practice for bombing runs. Man screwed up the food chain by eliminating the orca, now man needs to fix things by introducing more orcas or by eliminating the seal/sea lion population so that there is a proportionate balance between them and orcas.

Don't the tribes have some rights to hunt the seals and sea lions? Were they a part of the religious ceremonies? They want to hunt the Grey Whales, why not the other mammals of the sea?...I have an idea, but don't want to say