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What is Hood Canal?
Hood Canal is a place of natural beauty and sheer wonderment. It provides all the things that idealize the Pacific Northwest… evergreen trees, salmon, water, and scenery. It also provides many with homes or destination places for recreation.
A regional winery, naval facility, and two tribal nations reside on Hood Canal as do many small communities, parks, and fish hatchery facilities.
 The fisheries and wildlife can be abundant with the changing seasons. Hood Canal is home to a variety of critters that live in the water and on the land. Many are residents that can be found year ‘round, and others rely on the watershed of Hood Canal on their quest to complete migration journeys.
There are a variety of spring and fall migrants which can be seen along the shorelines, estuaries and even in backyards. Swallows, bats, hummingbirds, turkey vultures, warblers and shorebirds come and go, as do the salmon, smelt, and the occasional grey whale and killer whale pods.  People also tend to come and go. The summer months on Hood Canal can see a significant increase in the number of people that visit, play, and explore.
Hood Canal is not really a canal which connects one place with another. It is more correctly described as a long, narrow, deep, fjord-like body of water. It is influenced by many large and many more small streams. The water sources of the canal include snow and glacier melt of the Olympic Mountains and the spring fed lakes and wetlands of the Kitsap Peninsula. Much of Hood Canal is about water and wetlands.
What about the water of Hood Canal?
The geology and bathymetry (underwater topography) of Hood Canal play a large role in the water quality and dynamics of how the water moves. The entrance to the canal is relatively shallow, about 150’. Just south of the entrance the canal becomes very deep, to 500 and 600’. This ‘sill’ at the entrance creates a condition in the canal that doesn’t allow the water to flow or exchange very easily with the changing tides and seasons. The ‘sill’ tends to retain the water (reduces the exchange) in the canal and estimates of complete water exchange rates are in the magnitude of years.
The water of Hood Canal can be highly stratified… which means there is an upper layer of different temperature and salinity (saltiness). Highly stratified water doesn’t mix very well. So, essentially, the waters of Hood Canal are deep, stratified, and exchange very slowly. This is not a good situation when considering the resilience of Hood Canal to human contributions.
What role do nutrients play in the processes of Hood Canal?
 The marine (salty) water of Hood Canal receives freshwater from just about every point along the canal (including groundwater sources). The freshwater carries the end products of all the land activities… some of which include; fall leaves, winter run-off, and salmon carcasses (natural stuff) as well as yard waste, stormwater toxins, herbicide residue, and effluents from septics and sewers (non-natural stuff). All of these sources provide nutrients to Hood Canal… which is a good thing if the canal has the biological capability to process the nutrients without affecting water quality… and not so good if it creates an imbalance in those biological processes resulting in effects like too little oxygen in the bottom water. Too many nutrients going into the canal is not a good thing because it can create an ecological imbalance.
Don’t ecosystems make adjustment to changes?
 The world around us does change… but mostly at a rate in which the flora (plants) and fauna (animals) can adapt to. Some of the changes occurring in Hood Canal are occurring more rapidly than critters can adjust. During 2002, 2003, and 2004 marine fauna showed signs of suffering and death. In the fall of 2003, great numbers of bottom dwelling critters (rockfish, flounders, sculpins, gunnels, and others) died from the lack of dissolved oxygen (DO) in the waters.
Next: "What is Dissolved Oxygen Anyway?" Page 2 >>
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