Hood Canal
Hood Canal is a fjord-like body of water that lies west of Admiralty Inlet in Washington state that many people consider to be the western lobe and one of the four main basins of Puget Sound.
[3] Hood Canal extends for about 50 miles (80 km) southwest from the entrance between Foulweather Bluff and Tala Point to Union, where it turns sharply to the northeast, a stretch called The Great Bend.
The U.S. Navy's Naval Base Kitsap, Bangor Annex, is located on the eastern shore of Hood Canal near the town of Silverdale.
State parks on the shores of Hood Canal including Belfair, Twanoh, Potlatch, Triton Cove, Scenic Beach, Dosewallips, and Kitsap Memorial.
[14] Algal blooms occur in part because of warm weather and the slow turnover of water in the southern end of the canal, causing the build-up of nutrients from fertilizers and leaky septic systems.
[14][18] Coastal upwelling from the Strait of Juan de Fuca bring in a surplus of nutrients into the Puget Sound, but fail to circulate oxygen through Hood Canal.
[20] In May 2006, divers searching for invasive species discovered a mat of marine bacteria covering a 4-mile (6.4 km) stretch where all normal sea life was dead.
[21] Jan Newton, oceanographer at the University of Washington, said it was important to note that Hood Canal has had very low oxygen for a long time.
As of 2000, the National Research Council defined hypoxia to occur at a DO level of <2 mg/L—making Hood Canal's current 0.2 mg/L composition far below life-sustaining conditions.
[22] Critically low oxygen levels, due to increased bacterial growth, were observed in the lower portion of Hood Canal during the summer months of 2004 and 2005.
A low dissolved oxygen content in Anna's Bay and Lynch Cove is believed to have been responsible for the corresponding decline in spot shrimp catch by Skokomish Nation fishers within the same period of time.
Jan Newton, a local oceanographer, concluded that the water contained less than 1 milliliter per liter of dissolved oxygen and that such a low level is extremely stressful, often lethal, to the marine life in Hood Canal.
[24] The effects of Hood Canal's hypoxic conditions are clearly seen by the public through massive fish kills, but it is important to identify other harmful impacts resulting from a lack of oxygen in the basin.
[25] Other notable cases of hypoxia and its adverse effects on biodiversity include the large-scale hypoxic zone that appears in the Gulf of Mexico each summer.
[26] This program will work with local, state, federal, and tribal government policy makers to evaluate potential corrective actions that will restore and maintain a level of dissolved oxygen that will reduce stress on marine life.
Government agencies, such as Puget Sound Partnership and the United States Geological Survey, have used HCDOP's publicly available information to conduct their own assessment and modeling studies of Hood Canal.
But the abundance of some species, like the Chinook salmon, have advanced and limited loadings of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs) to Elliott Bay has improved water quality there.
[29] The best way to solve this problem is to work with the community to create state of the art sewage treatment plants or, at the very least, upgrade old and damaged septic systems to prevent leaks.
[30] During a week of record-breaking cold temperatures in December 2009, parts of Hood Canal developed a thin layer of ice, thicker near the shoreline.
