Healthy Human Population
Our goal is a healthy population supported by a healthy Puget Sound that is not threatened by changes in the ecosystem.
Humans are part of the Puget Sound ecosystem. From the air we breathe and the water we drink, to the local foods we eat and the parks we enjoy, a healthy Puget Sound supports a healthy human population.
What do the Vital Signs and indicators tell us about the Healthy Human Population recovery goal?
Spending time in nature and harvesting local foods provide valuable health and cultural benefits. Ensuring water quality for healthy and harvestable shellfish is essential to maintain Tribal cultural practices, local recreation activities, safe swimming beaches, and economic and ecosystem services.
Healthy and harvestable shellfish are an important component of a thriving ecosystem and robust economy in Puget Sound.
Puget Sound beaches offer recreational, ceremonial and subsistence, and commercial harvest of a variety of clams, oysters, and mussels, which are readily available to be gathered and enjoyed. Shellfish are a key resource supported by Tribal treaty rights and provide traditional foods for Tribal communities, and shellfish beds are places for cultural gatherings and knowledge sharing.
The Shellfish Strategic Initiative works to prevent pathogen pollution to keep shellfish safe to harvest and eat across Puget Sound.
Since 2007 more acres of shellfish growing areas have been upgraded than downgraded. The positive trend reflects state, Tribal, and local investments in effective Pollution Identification and Correction (PIC) programs. However, in both 2021 and 2022 more acres were downgraded than upgraded. This recent pattern is concerning and highlights the ongoing challenge to identify and correct nonpoint source pollution that affects water quality in the nearshore.
Pollution, heat waves, and unsustainable crab populations limit people’s access to shellfish harvest in some areas.
Closures, while necessary to protect human health and sustain the resource over time, affect people’s access to harvest for recreation, food security, cultural and family heritage, and other personal and emotional experiences.
Residents enjoy the many marine beaches around Puget Sound, which generally have good water quality conditions.
This is due in part to the work the BEACH program has done to identify and correct many local bacteria problems that would otherwise result in beach closures.
The severity of local and regional wildfires has been the main cause of Puget Sound residents’ exposure to unhealthy air quality in recent years.
In 2022, smoke from several fires in Washington’s Cascade Range caused intermittent periods of impaired air quality across the state, with an unusually late and severe smoke episode in western Washington in October. That year, 86 percent of Puget Sound’s population was exposed to impaired air quality.
