"This is a full-on surgery that we're doing here," describes fish biologist Scott Steltzner. A biologist with the Squaxin Island Indian Tribe, Steltzner is in charge of the project.

His team of biologists has the surgery down to a five-minute drill.

A yearling Coho salmon goes in a bucket with anesthetic. In less than two minutes the fish seems to fall nearly asleep. It's measured, placed in a small foam form and then a quick slice with the scalpel along the fish's abdomen.

Next, they insert a tiny transmitter. It's just under an inch long and they sew it up quickly.

"Good to go," says Steltzner as he drops the fish into the recovery bucket. And with that, the Coho becomes part of a ground-breaking experiment by the Squaxin Island Tribe.

"For the first time we're gonna get a look at the first six months of a salmon's life in saltwater," says Steltzner. "This has never been done before."

The Tribe has raised Coho in net pens at Peale Passage in the south end of Puget Sound for more than 30 years. But once they released the fish, they had no idea what happened to them.

Now, for the first time, they'll be able to track them all the way out to the open ocean.

It starts with the bite-sized transmitters. Each sends out a unique signal. The Tribe's fish biologists will put them in 140 coho.

Last week, volunteer divers working with Underwater Admiralty Services placed the last of 16 acoustic sensors around the south Sound. They are spread at depths ranging from 125 feet to depths of 75 feet. The last five are cemented to old Tacoma bridge anchor blocks.

The Tribe's sensors join more than six dozen placed throughout Puget Sound and strung across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

When these Coho are released next week they'll be tracked all the way through the Sound, through the Strait, and out to the Continental Shelf.

Finding out where they go is important, because fewer of these hatchery Coho return every year.

"We're trying to figure out what is happening to these fish and where is our problem happening," says Steltzner. "Is it in South Sound, is it in the Ocean or is it in North Sound?"

The story these fish will tell could help generations of coho survive.