ASK A NORTHWESTERNER to pick the creature that epitomizes Puget Sound, and odds are the answer will be orcas or salmon. Ask Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Wayne Palsson, and he'll tell you the ugly truth: Ratfish rule.

Pound-for-pound, the green-eyed bottom feeders dominate the Sound's ecosystem like Doug fir dominates the forests. Heap all the fish from the main basin on a scale, and nearly 70 percent of the flopping mass would be what fisheries veterans call "rats."

Ratfish keep such a low profile few people have heard of them — and fewer still have ever seen one. But with an estimated 200 million at home in Puget Sound, that's more than 30 rats for every woman, man and child in the state.

Not that anybody would want to take home a stringer-full. Even seagulls prefer not to pick at the cartilaginous carcasses.

How is it that Puget Sound, once a seemingly bottomless source of seafood, is now brimming with a fish most folks would call trash?

Surely these are the wages of our ecological sins.

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