By CHRISTOPHER DUNAGAN, Scripps Howard News Service

BREMERTON, Wash. - Federal biologists are proposing to track Puget Sound's endangered orcas by using tiny satellite transmitters, attached to the whales' dorsal fins with a dart fired from an airgun.

PORT ANGELES, Wash. - Nobody seems to know for sure if stories are true about 100-pound chinook salmon swimming in the Elwha River.

You've got your believers and your nonbelievers. If these giant fish were ever real, they existed before the Elwha Dam was built in 1911.

PORT ANGELES, Wash. - The stage is set for the largest dam-removal project in U.S. history, including an unprecedented effort to restore the full range of Northwest salmon species to the Elwha River.

Biologists even hope that we may one day see the legendary 100-pound Elwha chinook.

The Environmental Protection Agency will soon order the manufacturers of 67 pesticides to conduct tests to determine if chemical ingredients in their products can affect the hormonal systems of humans and animals.

The third newborn killer whale spotted in the Puget Sound area within the past month looks healthy and energetic, a hopeful sign after a spate of orca deaths last year.

Puget Sound killer whales are not only suffering from exposure to a contaminated food supply, but the salmon they're eating appear to be less nutritious than scientists previously assumed.

BREMERTON, Wash. -- Entering uncertain waters, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency must now protect salmon as well as human life and property.

BREMERTON, Wash. -- About 400 adult chinook salmon received a free bus ride up the Skokomish River in Washington this year, as biologists perfected a plan to boost dwindling runs of wild chinook.

BREMERTON, Wash. -- West Coast shellfish biologists are engaged in a war against a species of bacteria that has been killing oyster larvae and threatening to cripple the $111 million-a-year shellfish industry.

BREMERTON, Wash. -- Tree-cutting thieves laid waste to numerous large, aging maple trees on public property in Kitsap County this week -- presumably to cash in on valuable "figured" maple used to make musical instruments.