This website offers information on how physical and biological ocean conditions may affect the growth and survival of juvenile salmon in the northern California Current off Oregon and Washington. Information comes from a variety of internet sources and direct observations from biweekly oceanographic sampling along the Newport (Oregon) Hydrographic Line and annual juvenile salmonid surveys conducted off Oregon and Washington. 

Scientists used these data to develop a suite of ocean ecosystem indicators that can be used to inform management decisions for endangered salmon. This approach shows that biological indicators are directly linked to the success of salmon during their first year at sea through food-chain processes. These biological indicators, coupled with physical oceanographic data, offer new insight into the mechanisms that lead to success or failure for salmon runs.

In addition to forecasting salmon returns, the indicators may be of use to those working to understand how variations in ocean conditions might affect recruitment of fish stocks, seabirds, and other marine animals. Trends in salmon survival track regime shifts in the North Pacific Ocean, and these shifts are transmitted up the food chain in a more-or-less linear and bottom-up fashion as follows:

upwelling → nutrients → plankton → forage fish → salmon.

The same regime shifts that affect Pacific salmon also affect the migration of Pacific hake and the abundance of sea birds, both of which prey on migrating juvenile salmon. Therefore, climate variability can also have "top down" impacts on salmon through predation by hake and sea birds (terns and cormorants). The site explores both "bottom up" and "top down" linkages.