Lynda V. Mapes, The Seattle Times

Scientists have determined the differences between the two types of killer whales that frequent the Pacific Northwest are so large, they ought to be designated separate species.

A Canadian environmental group estimated the amount of chinooks caught from U.S. waters at 7,700 — enough to feed three or four endangered orcas for a year.

L25 is bigger than the other orcas in the southern resident pods because she was able to eat well when young, when salmon were more plentiful.

Two dams on the Olympic Peninsula’s Elwha River were gone by 2014 in what was the largest dam removal project ever undertaken.

The corpse of the killer whale also known as Lolita was cut into pieces and placed in 20 50-gallon barrels, and the larger bones put in bins with the goal of using them to make castings for multiple displays of her skeleton.

The team found a much higher density of big chinooks than expected in the area they sampled in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Officials say there’s no way to know why the whale is far from its home and family in Southcentral Alaska’s Cook Inlet or other populations in the Arctic and subarctic.

Salmon are cold-water animals. Water temperatures above 62 degrees make them more vulnerable to disease, and as temperatures climb, they will stop migrating altogether.

Whale experts from the United States and Canada are treating and monitoring a gray whale that appears to have developed an infection months after being darted with a satellite tracking tag.

There hasn’t been a fishery on Lake Washington sockeye since 2006 — and now extinction looms.

Tire dust in roadway runoff seeps, trickles and pours into water bodies, including urban streams, every time it rains. Salmon usually die within hours.

The legislation for the first time allows the killing of Steller sea lions, in addition to California sea lions, and makes any of them fair game within a nearly 200-mile stretch of the Columbia and its tributaries.

The seven-year program would begin in November and would be carried on across a vast area from northern California to Alaska.

Hundreds of gray whales turned up dead from California to Alaska last year.

Twin monarchs of the Pacific Northwest, chinook salmon and southern resident orcas, are struggling for survival after a century of habitat losses.