It's clear that changes in ocean conditions are slower and less predominant in the Pacific Ocean than in the Atlantic. We don't know why. The range of variation in conditions in the Pacific, with the exception of the Blob, is not as wide. Up and down the coast in British Columbia, we're not seeing as wide a level of change and therefore we don't attribute that to population change as much.
At this point, we know that adult survival of Pacific salmon is lower than it was in the past. Given that many of the conditions of the past are still the same, it is clear that things are changing. Your colleague said that “something weird is happening to the ocean”. Of course, we need to come up with a better description than that. We know that the level of change in the ocean is significant, and we strongly suspect that this is having an effect on adult salmon survival. Can we prove that categorically through experimentation? No. A big part of what we're going to be doing in the next little while is developing a technology that we hope will allow us to figure out where these animals go. After they leave the strait or whatever, we don't know what happens to them. We're hoping this will help us a fair bit.