Puget Sound, Washington, USA, Pacific Ocean

In 1990, there were just over 3.3 million people living in the 12 counties surrounding Puget Sound and the Northwest Straits. By 2000 there were well over 4 million. It is this population pressure that leads to many of the problems that Puget Sound is facing.

An example of a salt marsh at high tide, at the south end of Sapelo Island, Georgia. Though Georgia's coast is only about 100 miles long, about 1/3 of all salt marsh on the East Coast of the U. S. is found here. Photo courtesy of Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve.

73 percent of the original salt marshes around Puget Sounds have been destroyed. The majority has been so that new urban areas could expand. In some areas 100% of the salt marshes have disappeared. The Puyallup River Delta is such an example. Saltmarshes are an important habitat for a wide variety of animals. A commercially important one is salmon. Years of incremental losses of habitat (upstream habitat, slat marsh, seagrass beds etc), pollution and mismanagement finally added up to clear disaster for Puget Sound wild salmon runs. In 1999, all Puget Sound chinook salmon runs were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, (along with Puget Sound bull trout and Hood Canal summer chum). Unfortunately they are not alone, herring (a huge part of salmon diets) and rockfish populations have plummeted too.

A legacy of industrial pollution and spills contaminate the bottom mud of Puget Sound creating a reservoir of pollutants. The effects of this pollution are seen in the ecosystem's top predators, the resident orca whale population. A combination of the crashing salmon populations (their food) and a build-up of immune-system-destroying PCBs in their fat began to take a toll in the late 1990s when the healthy population began to waiver.

An industrial facility on Puget Sound, Port Townsend, Washington. Photo courtesy of NOAA.

However there is hope. Estuary habitat restoration has begun. Intertidal habitats such as beaches, mudflats, salt marshes and side-channels are being reinstated, even in heavily developed harbour areas. An Estuary Habitat Restoration Bill in 2000 will restore 1,000,000 acres of estuarine habitat in next 10 years.