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This article was originally published by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife as part of its annual report Threatened and Endangered Wildlife in Washington.

Pink salmon now comprise nearly 80 percent of all adult salmon in the North Pacific. This record abundance is coming at a cost to other salmon species such as threatened Chinook, which compete with pinks for spawning territory. A new study shows that the ecological toll may extend all the way to endangered southern resident killer whales.

A recent summary includes information compiled in Winter 2013 by the modeling workgroup of the Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program (PSEMP). It describes several ecosystem modeling efforts in the region.

Adult northern fur seals spend more than 300 days per year (about 80 percent of their time) at sea. During the summer and autumn they intermittently fast while on land and feed at sea. During the winter and spring they are pelagic, occupying the North Pacific Ocean as well as the Bering and Okhotsk Seas. Northern fur seals are considered rare in the Salish Sea, and there have been 93 confirmed sightings of stranded animals in the state of Washington since 1982.

This article was originally published by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife as part of its annual report Threatened and Endangered Wildlife in Washington.