sockeye in a coal mine

Trying to solve the mystery of the 200,000 missing salmon
Salmon carcasses floated belly-up when water rose in the Locks, which separate Lake Washington from Puget Sound. Dying salmon lay gasping on rocks along the brackish water between the Locks and the Sound.

"In my 15 years there was nothing as bad as last year, as far as just seeing dead bodies of sockeye," said Mahovlich, a fish biologist for the Muckleshoot Tribe, which helps manage the sockeye run.

But he was even more startled by the final picture that emerged late in the year: As many as 200,000 sockeye, roughly half the run, had disappeared somewhere between the Locks and their spawning grounds in streams beyond the lake.

The mystery of the missing sockeye has scientists puzzled and worried, as they try to decipher the fate of a cherished run that passes through the heart of Seattle. So far, scientists are focusing their suspicion on abnormal water temperature. And they worry that climate change could make it more than a freak occurrence.

Great. Climate Change strikes again. So let's put some fish farms out to sea, and dye the flesh of the resultant runty mono-salmon pink, to make up for the shrimp they'll never eat.

No one will know the difference. Will they?