Commercial shellfish growers, tribes, WDFW, Wa. State Conservation Commission, the Puget Sound Action Team, the Hood Canal Coordinating Council, local non-governmental organizations, and citizens have all identified Dabob Bay as an area of concern due to shoreline and upland development risks and potential impacts to important marine habitats.

A gap in the protection of marine habitats has been identified. Biological information and parcel-level prioritization of habitat is expected to result in the expansion of this important marine protected area. This area is currently partially protected through acquisition by WDNR and conservation easements. The long-term objective of this project is to better identify fish habitat use and the risks and protection needs of the bay.

The MRC partnered with the Northwest Watershed Institute (NWI), Jefferson Land Trust, the Hood Canal Environmental Council, agencies, and tribes to conduct an assessment of 2 ESA-listed pacific salmon populations and forage fish use in Tarboo Bay. This is part of a larger Tarboo Watershed Assessment that focuses on the Tarboo Estuary and lower Tarboo Creek. The research team included: Northwest Watershed Institute, Hood Canal Coordinating Council, National Marine Fisheries Service, Olympic National Forest, U.S. Forest Service, Point No Point Treaty Council, and WDFW.

187 acres of this estuary are protected by DNR with the help of the Nature Conservancy for the purposes of: protecting examples of undisturbed terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, rare plant and animal species, and unique geologic features to serve as gene reserves; to serve as baselines to compare similar but disturbed ecosystems, and to provide outdoor laboratories for research. Specifically, it prot ects two types of salt marsh (low intertidal high salinity sandy marsh and high intertidal high salinity marsh) and to preserve a representative example of a coastal spit ecosystem in the Puget Trough physiographic province of Washington.