Greg Shimek will speak to us about the Coastal Cut Throat Commission’s work on the preservation of sea run cutthroat in the Puget Sound.

Greg is the leading voice for what has become the Coastal Cutthroat Coalition, which raises awareness of the cutthroat’s place in the Sound and raises funding for Losee’s research to understand the fish, its habitat and our impact on its aquatic home.

The Coalition has published several studies from cataloging spawning streams to ground-breaking research on cutthroat spawning timing, how cutthroat are impacted by variation in water supply, migration patterns and cutthroat behavior in saltwater. 

“In the South Sound we discovered that each stream has its own genetic profile”. There is less interbreeding between streams than thought, he said, and it also means each stream harbors fish that give coastal cutthroat more genetic variety. The Coalition is at work on a separate study of 17 streams in Hood Canal to find if the same is true of that habitat as well.