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"Right now those fish are utilizing maybe a quarter of their historic habitat," Peone said. If more habitat is restored, "You could see 1 million fish coming back here." Ritchie Graves, a NOAA Fisheries Service biologist who makes sure federally owned dams are living up to their Endangered Species Act obligations not to kill too many salmon, said the survival rate for young salmon swimming downstream to the ocean has been higher than ever the past three years, hitting about 50 percent for sockeye. Those improved dam operations have also benefited chinook, coho, chums, pinks and steelhead, said Graves. The six species combined accounted for 1.8 million salmon over Bonneville in 2010, compared to 471,144 in 1938. Once young salmon get to the ocean, scientists have only a vague idea where they go, and an incomplete understanding of why some years they thrive and some years they starve. Generally, years when climate and weather cause the ocean waters to well up, salting the water column with food, fish do better. But unlike most salmon, which eat other fish, sockeye eat plankton, tiny shrimplike animals. Though poor ocean conditions have been blamed for a nosedive in chinook salmon in Alaska this year, sockeye have done well, not only in the Columbia, but in Canadian and Alaskan rivers as well. "Whatever is going on in the ocean is basically being good to sockeye," said Tweit.
[Associated
Press;
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