KING 5 reported tonight on the Upper Skagit Tribe’s efforts to find out how hundreds of dead coho salmon wound up on a beach near Lyman.

Officials discovered the adipose fin had been clipped on these fish and the females had been cut open and the eggs removed. Those are things they do at hatcheries.

The State’s Marblemount hatchery, located upstream, collects thousands of coho that return each year. Hatchery operators say they give away thousands of the older, inedible fish like the ones found at Lyman to river enhancement groups, and those groups scatter the nutrient-rich carcasses throughout the river system.

Read the story and watch the video here.