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BackgroundForage fishes are small schooling fishes that form a critical link in the marine food web between zooplankton and larger fish and wildlife consumers. They occupy every marine and estuarine nearshore habitat in Washington, and much of the intertidal and shallow subtidal areas of the Puget Sound Basin are used by these species for spawning habitat. Status of forage fish popula...

BackgroundBentho-pelagic fish utilize both demersal (bottom) habitats and shallower portion of the water column, often as part of diel migrations whereby fish feed in shallow water at night and move to deeper water to form schools during the day. Four currently or historically important species of bentho-pelagic fish in Puget Sound are the Pacific hake (Merluccius productus), the Paci...

Brown Rockfish (Sebastes auriculatus). Image courtesy of NOAA.BackgroundRockfish are bony fish in the Scorpaenid family, primarily in the genus Sebastes. Approximately 28 species of rockfish are reported from Puget Sound (Palsson et al. 2009), spanning a range of life-history types, habitats, and ecological niches. This diversity makes rockfish challenging to manage as a group and con...

BackgroundFish in the family Salmonidae (salmon, trout, and charr) are unique in their cultural, economic and ecological role in Puget Sound. Because they utilize a very wide range of aquatic habitat types throughout their life history, they play potentially integral roles in the upland freshwater, nearshore and pelagic marine ecosystems and food webs of Puget Sound. They also provide...

BackgroundPuget Sound is important for nesting, wintering, and migration of numerous bird species associated with the marine environment. More than 70 bird species regularly utilize Puget Sound during some or all stages of their life histories (Gaydos and Pearson 2011), but only a portion of these are actively being investigated. Studies have focused primarily on abundance and distrib...

photo by Steve Hillebrand, courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.BackgroundBald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) are present year-round throughout most parts of Washington with the highest densities in the Puget Sound region. Individuals occur in the Puget Sound basin as migrants, winter residents and members of the breeding population. They are often associated with shoreli...

Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Background Harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) are found throughout temperate and arctic waters of the northern hemisphere, and inhabit coastal and estuarine waters along the eastern Pacific Ocean from Baja California north to the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea (Carretta et al. 2004, Carretta et al. 2007) . Harbor seals are fo...

A "spy hopping" Southern Resident killer whale in the San Juan Islands. Image courtesy of NOAA.BackgroundThree distinct groups of killer whales (Orcinus orca) occupy the coastal waters of the northeastern Pacific. These groups—northern and southern residents, transients, and offshores—are distinguished by diet, behavior, morphology, and other characteristics. Among these, Southern Res...

BackgroundEelgrass (Zostera marina L.) is an aquatic flowering plant common in tidelands and shallow waters along much of Puget Sound’s shoreline. The species is restricted to soft-sediment habitats. Sexual reproduction occurs through seed production. Vegetative spread occurs via growth of below-ground rhizomes, which can result in the formation of large, dense beds. Eelgrass is widel...