Where is Puget Sound?

People For Puget Sound considers the land and waters in the northwest corner of Washington State --from the Canadian border on the north to the Pacific Ocean on the west including Hood Canal-- as the Puget Sound region.

Some would argue that Puget Sound is actually only the waters south of Admiralty Inlet as explored and named by Captain George Vancouver over 200 years ago. We like to think of the Puget Sound region as Puget Sound, Hood Canal and the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Haro and Rosario. The Puget Sound Estuary.

See the Puget Sound Action Team's "About Puget Sound" section.

This is the Puget Sound estuary-- where water that falls on the Cascade and Olympic Mountains flows to meet the marine waters of the Sound--

• Total area of land and water: 2,458 square miles
• Total length of marine shorelines: approx. 2,500 miles
• Average depth: 450 feet
• Deepest point: 930 feet
• Number of streams and rivers flowing to the Sound: approx. 10,000
• Population: approximately 3.5 million (2000 census)
• Number of counties: 12
• Number of tribes: 15
• Annual number of cargo vessels in the Sound: 2,451 (2006)
• Number of boats registered to residents living on or near the Sound: 168,374 (2003)
• Number of state parks on the Sound: 35
• Number of species of marine fish: 200
• Number of species of marine mammals: 26
• Number of species of marine seaweeds and sea grasses: 625
• Number of species of marine birds: 200
• Number of species of invertebrates: 3,000 and still counting
  

Items for the list above were selected from the Puget Sound Action Team's Puget Sound "Index."