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.
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.