They eat 6-7% of their body weight every day, so it's looking for more than a salmon!
Females are 500-750 pounds and males can get up over a ton. That's 30-140 pounds of food per day per adult. We also know they tend to only eat the richest part of the salmon and leave the rest for crabs, so maybe double that number or more of live weight fish that are killed.
If the average coho is 7 pounds, one of those stinky pigs can go through 10 a day. Say coho are available for a conservative 30 days, that's 300 coho each and every one may be killing (not to mention chinook). Where I fish, their favorite food seems to be released fish with extra fins, so they are likely disproportionately impacting the very native runs that are most threatened. Either way, they have the largest single impact on our endangered run thus our fishing seasons.
Rant off, back to admiring their cuteness.
I do wish there were a few tribes that exercised their treaty hunting rights on the water as well as on land. I would chip in boat gas money for sure.
