In conjunction with additional research into the demands by our local
environmentalists that storm water runoff from our boatyards contain no
more than 3-4 parts per billion copper, I reached the following
conclusion:

If salmon are going to killed by concentrations of copper that exceed
3-4 parts per billion, they don't stand a chance in hell out in the
open ocean.

According to this scientific study:

http://sabella.mba.ac.uk/764/01/The_..._sea-water.pdf

sea water contains about 0.2 parts per *million* (not billion) copper.

Unless my math skills fail me, it looks like pure sea water contains
about 200 parts per billion copper, or about 50 times the concentration
of copper that envrionmentalists think should be allowed to flow out of
the drainpipe from a boat yard.

Those poor, hapless salmon. After clearing the 3-4 ppb allowable copper
content in a boatyard's storn water runoff, they get out to sea and are
immediately forced to deal with 50 times that amount as a naturally
occuring element.