WASHINGTON, D.C. — Researchers have been scrambling for more than a year to make sense of a strange disease that’s causing West Coast starfish to die by the millions.
Now it looks like help could be coming from Congress.
U.S. Rep. Denny Heck from Olympia introduced a bill Thursday that would dedicate federal funds for researching the epidemic, which has now spread along North America’s Pacific coast from Alaska to Mexico and in some places on the East Coast as well.
The disease has hit more than 20 species of West Coast starfish. Scientists are calling it the largest marine disease outbreak ever recorded.
Drew Harvell, a marine epidemiologist at Cornell University, has been studying the outbreaks in Puget Sound and is leading nationwide efforts to understand the epidemic. She says this legislation is critical because tracking marine disease outbreaks is so challenging.
“Disease outbreaks — they’re like lightning strikes. They occur unpredictably and rapidly,” Harvell says. “To identify their causative microorganisms or stop them from spreading requires significant scientific investigations on really short notice.”
The proposed legislation would establish a plan for declaring and responding to the sea star disease outbreaks as well as future marine disease emergencies.
Harvell says increased funding could speed up the search for what’s causing the disease and for ways to prevent starfish from permanently vanishing from North American coastlines.
“It will allow scientists like me to leverage rapid funding and come up with proactive measures to protect our valuable marine fisheries and biodiversity,” Harvell says.
Americans will spend nearly $60 billion on their pets this year and a lot of that money goes for vet care. Some of those pet meds are contaminating our waters. | credit: Flickr/Claire
But medications the vet prescribes for Fido’s health may be contaminating our watersheds.
Just like pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) for humans, soaps and medicines for pets contain compounds that can harm aquatic ecosystems.
“There is a cocktail of chemicals being detected in our watersheds,” said Sam Chan, a watershed health specialist with the Oregon Sea Grant.
Even though the concentrations are low, PPCPs in watersheds have still been shown to impact the development and behavior of fish and can make them more susceptible to predation.
The National Sea Grant program recently partnered with the American Veterinary Medicine Association to promote the reduction of improper PPCP disposal. As part of this project, Chan and other researchers at OSU are launching a national survey to learn more about the practices and awareness of this issue among pet owners and veterinary professionals.
“The main way people dispose of these products is by throwing them in the garbage,” Chan said. “It seems like a reasonable solution, but when they go to the landfill, rain seeps through and then the water is contaminated with those compounds.”
So what’s the best way to get rid of unused PPCP’s for pets? Definitely don’t flush them. Chan recommends either taking them to a drug take-back event or mixing them with something unpalatable to pets (such as coffee grounds) and then putting them in a sealed container and depositing in the trash.
A mussel is opened for analysis at the WDFW lab. Volunteers and WDFW used mussels to test for contaminants at more than 100 sites up and down Puget Sound. | credit: WDFW
SEATTLE — Scientists used shellfish to conduct the broadest study to date of pollution levels along the shore of Puget Sound.
And in some places, it’s pretty contaminated.
This past winter the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife put mussels at more than 100 sites up and down Puget Sound.
After a few months, volunteers and WDFW employees gathered the shellfish and analyzed them for metals, fossil fuel pollution, flame-retardants and other chemicals. The WDFW just released the results.
“The biggest concentrations of those contaminants were found in the highly urbanized bays – Elliott Bay, Salmon Bay, in the Sinclair Inlet, Commencement Bay we found much higher contaminations than we did in the rest of Puget Sound,” said Jennifer Lanksbury, a biologist who led the study for the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
PAHs – or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – were found in mussels at every single test site. PAHs come from fossil fuels – spilled oil, wood stove smoke and engine exhaust, mainly. The particles can be deposited through the air or get washed into Puget Sound when it rains. Some PAHs are carcinogenic.
Map of PAH levels in Puget Sound. Credit: WDFW
The mussel samples all contained PCBs as well. Flame retardants and DDT were found at more than 90 percent of the sites – with the highest levels in more urban bays.
“This is showing that these contaminants are entering the nearshore food web and they’re likely being passed up to other higher organisms and people eat mussels too,” Lanksbury added.
The state Department of Health does rigorous testing for toxic algae and bacteria in shellfish – the kind of stuff that makes you sick immediately. But it doesn’t regularly test shellfish for metals and other contaminants that can harm human health over longer periods of exposure.
“PAH is a difficult issue,” said Dave McBride with the Department of Health. “They are widespread in the environment. We probably get a lot greater exposure to PAHs from the food we eat on the grill, hamburgers or smoked salmon. It’s all relative. Some of the PAHs are considered carcinogens so it’s definitely on our radar.”
Shellfish harvest, in general, is limited in dense urban areas – where the DFW’s mussel study showed the highest levels of contaminants. However, this past winter China banned all imports of shellfish from much of the west coast after finding elevated levels of arsenic in some shellfish harvested near Tacoma.
Volunteers Jonathan Frodge, Chris Wilke and Paul
Fredrickson gather mussel samples at Discovery
Park in Seattle. Credit: Tom Foley
Lanksbury says that she still feels safe eating mussels and other shellfish from Puget Sound. And, she adds, there are things people can do to lower pollution levels.
“When they say, don’t let your car drip oil, support low-impact development where they’re having rain gardens, don’t wash your car on the side of the road – all of those kinds of things spare Puget Sound from contaminants that we produce on a daily basis by burning fossil fuels,” Lanksbury said.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife hopes to keep the mussel monitoring program going, with the continued help of more than 100 volunteers and citizen scientists from around Puget Sound.
WASHINGTON—A bill to provide continued funding to improve estuaries in the Puget Sound region that Rep. Rick Larsen, WA-02, introduced passed the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee today. Larsen introduced the bipartisan bill with Rep. Frank LoBiondo, NJ-02 earlier this summer. H.R. 5266 would reauthorize the National Estuary Program through 2018, funding local efforts to restore and protect sensitive estuaries and their wildlife.
“Estuaries are a critical habitat for salmon, birds and many other species in the Pacific Northwest, where we know that protecting our natural resources is good for both the environment and the economy. In addition to improving salmon habitat, restoring estuaries can have important carbon sequestration effects, as a recent report on the Snohomish Estuary found. Healthy estuaries support our strong fishing industry and are one of the many draws for tourists who visit Northwest Washington because of recreational opportunities. This bill will continue federal support for local efforts to keep these sensitive habitats vital today and for future generations.
“I have long supported estuary restoration in the Puget Sound region, like the Qwuloolt Estuary Restoration Project, which will be one of the largest tidal marsh restoration projects ever completed in our state when it is finished.
“I am pleased to work with Rep. LoBiondo on this bipartisan bill that will ensure local organizations across the country can continue their work to protect and restore estuaries,” Larsen said.
Funding from the National Estuary Program, which is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, helps build the comprehensive plan for Puget Sound recovery through the Puget Sound Partnership.
As ICTMN reported recently, indigenous peoples will be at the forefront of upcoming United Nations and civil society events in New York City. The long anticipated, one and a half day World Conference on Indigenous Peoples will be immediately followed by a one day United Nations Climate Summit. Immediately preceding the Summit is a three day Climate Convergence conference and march in which indigenous groups like #Idle No More And International Indian Treaty Council are taking a lead role.
Unlike a decade ago, climate change is no longer a topic limited to the ranting of left-wing radicals and only the daftest of fools continue to deny its reality. The evidence is staring us in the face with each new catastrophic weather event and satellite image of melting polar ice caps. And scientists and politicians alike know that indigenous peoples are the canaries in the proverbial coal mine. Climate refugees are by and large indigenous peoples from island nations and other low-lying regions being inundated by rising seas, to say nothing of those displaced by famine and drought from changing weather patterns.
No one is unaffected, even in the so-called “first world.” Fourth World nations are on the frontlines of climate disaster; the Quinault Nation received a sobering wake-up call earlier this year when a state of emergency was declared after a seawall breach caused severe flooding. Northwest coast tribes are also affected by a disastrous decline in shellfish due to ocean acidification. The Columbia River plateau region is expected to become more vulnerable to drought, warmer summer temperatures, and more extreme weather episodes. Earlier snowmelt and reductions in snowpack will stress some reservoir systems, and increased stress on groundwater systems will lead to a decrease in recharge and ultimately decreases in salmon populations.
This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the havoc climate change is and will continue to wreak, not just in the Pacific Northwest, but all over Indian country. Climate change demands the ability to mitigate and adapt to the damage and disruption being caused to traditional ways of life in indigenous communities. It does also, in fact, present the opportunity for Indian nations to respond in ways that reinforce their self-determination by developing their own unique approaches to mitigate and adapt to climate change. At this point every native nation in the US should be adopting a tribal climate change policy (TCCP).
In 2008 I wrote a research paper on the need for TCCP, specifically for the Colville Confederated Tribes. Back then, tribal nations were only just beginning to think about how to prepare for climate change. It’s interesting to see how much has changed since then. For example, the Obama administration in 2013 moved to support tribal self-determination through climate change action when it included tribal participation in an executive order promoting national climate change preparedness, something almost unimaginable in the Bush administration of 2008.
While such initiatives focus on funding, TCCP should be culturally responsive to individual nations. I wrote that “it must encompass cultural, political, economic, and legal considerations; in other words, it should be ‘holistic’ to be meaningful and effective. It should be rooted in traditional cultural values drawn from ancestral teachings and stories which teach respect for the land and all that lives on the land, in the sky and in the waters (traditional environmental knowledge and spirituality). Those teachings inform appropriate action and are guiding philosophies as much for today’s people as those of the ancient past.”
I wrote that “functionally, TCCP should take into consideration mitigation efforts as much as possible; however, at this point adaptation efforts must be pursued with priority simply because climate change impacts are unavoidable. It should take into account that while current international efforts addressing climate change (i.e. the Kyoto Protocol and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) are focused on the actions of Member States, the voices of indigenous peoples is marginalized. They must be inserted because it is indigenous people who are more disproportionately affected by climate change as well as being vulnerable to the dysfunctional elements of the carbon trading system. We need to remember that within the global conversation of how to deal with climate change, it is the Social Greens who most represent our interests, and it is with groups that espouse this ideology that we must ally ourselves most closely.”
Six years later, we have witnessed not just the solid alignment with the Social Green movement, but indigenous peoples taking the lead in climate justice activism. The Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 proved not to be responsive enough to indigenous peoples, and it was the bravery of Canadian First Nations women who gave birth to #Idle No More, now perhaps the most recognizable contingent of indigenous peoples in the world of climate justice activism.
The upcoming events in New York, however well attended and organized they turn out to be, are unlikely to produce any sweeping changes for indigenous peoples. And there may even be legitimate reasons to be leery of the NGO industrial complex driving today’s climate justice activism with whom indigenous nations are partnering. At the end of the day though, it’s all just a reminder that Fourth World/indigenous peoples must be proactive by creating and implementing their own plans for the inevitable future of a warmer world.
Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville) is a freelance writer and research associate at the Center for World Indigenous Studies. She was educated at the University of New Mexico and holds a bachelor’s degree in Native American Studies and a master’s degree in American Studies.
The relief that California tribes experienced when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation agreed to open water flows into the Trinity River to avert a fish kill may have been short-lived. Fears were revived and water flows have been increased again after the discovery of a deadly parasitic salmon-killing disease in the Lower Klamath River.
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pathologist has found severe ich (ichthyophthirius multifiliis) infestations in fall-run Chinook salmon taken from the Lower Klamath River, the Hoopa Valley Tribe said in a statement on September 15. This is the same disease that killed 60,000 to 80,000 fish in 2002.
“The fear is that all the fish might die in the Lower Klamath like they did in 2002,” said Robert Franklin, senior hydrologist with Hoopa Tribal Fisheries, in the statement.
The disease spreads quickly in overcrowded, warm waters, both conditions that are caused by lower water flows into the rivers, as fish congregate in small, cooler areas. The Hoopa Valley and other tribes had implored Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to agree to release flows and divert them from agricultural use, which the Bureau of Reclamation did at the end of August.
Water flow on the Trinity would have to double immediately to prevent the infection from spreading, Franklin said in the statement, because it would take days for the water to reach the Lower Klamath River.
“The Hoopa Valley Tribe is very appreciative of the earlier action that Reclamation took by releasing preventative flows,” Hoopa Valley Tribal Chairwoman Danielle Vigil-Masten said in the tribe’s statement. “We are in another stage that we did not anticipate and we shouldn’t deviate from what the science tells us to do. We expect that Reclamation will take the right action which is to release the emergency flows that are called for under the criteria.”
The U.S. Department of the Interior agreed, and began releasing the water from Trinity Reservoir on September 16. The Hoopa Valley Tribe warned that water levels along part of the river would rise as high as four feet during the increased flow period, which could last for seven days.
“This is the only possible means of preventing or reducing the severity of a parasite outbreak,” said Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Regional Director David Murillo in a statement. “We are greatly concerned about the impact today’s decision may have on already depleted storage levels, particularly the cold water pool in Trinity Reservoir. We must, however, take all reasonable measures to prevent a recurrence of the fish losses experienced in 2002.”
WASHOUGAL, Wash. — Coal had been transported around the country by rail for decades before the recent push to bring it by train to ports in the Northwest.
And yet, scientists don’t really know how much coal dust could escape from rail cars, how far it might travel, and what coal-borne mercury and other contaminants might do to aquatic life.
With the permitting process moving forward for two large coal terminals in Washington, a team of scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey is trying to find out how the chemicals in coal might interact with the environment.
“We really don’t know what the effects are and whether it is an issue,” says Bob Black, a scientist with the USGS.
Black is the lead scientist on the new study, which has him squelching through the muck at the Steigerwald Wildlife Refuge near Washougal, Washington. The refuge is sandwiched between the Columbia River to the south, and train tracks to the north.
Black and his team are gathering data for a first-of-its kind scientific study of coal and its potential impacts on wetland ecosystems. As he sloshes through the shallow marsh’s waters to plant minnow traps, Black says he knows that he’s also wading into a controversial issue.
“There are communities that are economically interested in this and then there are suggested environmental impacts and ultimately I can have my own personal views but I can’t let those come into play and essentially that’s our role. We can’t let that be part of our science,” Black says.
The team fans out across the marsh as a BNSF Railway train screeches along tracks less than a quarter-mile away. This train is not hauling coal. Right now, roughly one coal train per day travels along the Columbia River before turning north and following the shoreline of Puget Sound to service Canadian coal terminals. But if terminals are built in Longview and near Bellingham, that number could jump to more than 20 coal trains per day.
Some coal does escape from trains, as BNSF has testified publicly in the past. Environmental groups have sued BNSF Railway for violating the Clean Water Act by allowing coal and coal dust to escape from trains and get into waterways along tracks in the Northwest. A judge ruled this month in favor of local groups in Seward, Alaska after they sued a nearby coal terminal for similar Clean Water Act violations. However, supporters of coal exports have called the coal escapement issue a red herring, used by anti-coal environmental groups to spark public alarm.
Looking For Coal Clues
The USGS is gathering samples of muck, fish and insects from two sites in this wildlife refuge, one close to the tracks, the other farther away. The goal is to find out whether more mercury and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are showing up near the train tracks and how those contaminants are behaving in the environment.
Collin Eagles-Smith hunts for dragonfly larvae at Stiegerwald
Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Credit: Ashley Ahearn
Collin Eagles-Smith, an ecologist with USGS, stands thigh-deep in the marsh, net in hand. He’s sifting through handfuls of black muck, looking for dragonfly larvae. When he finds one, he opens his palm to display the specimen before putting it in a little plastic baggy to take back to the lab for analysis. Eagles-Smith says dragonflies can serve as vectors to transmit mercury contamination out of the aquatic environment and into land-based ecosystems because they feed on all kinds of plankton and other tiny organisms. When they grow up and fly out of the muck they are in turn eaten by birds, frogs, fish and other animals, potentially transferring mercury contamination up the food chain.
“So what we’re looking at is essentially, is there mercury in this dragonfly and then we’re going to be using a fairly sophisticated approach to fingerprint the isotope ratios of the mercury to see if we can say whether the mercury in this dragonfly was from coal dust,” he explains.
By comparing dragonfly larvae, sediment and fish samples from this site with those from another site farther from the tracks, the team hopes to see how far contamination from coal trains could travel. But Eagles-Smith says there are still a lot of questions about how active the mercury in coal might be if it gets into the environment. Mercury is believed to be inert and less harmful to the environment until it goes through a complex biological process known as mercury methylation.
“I like to think of it as activating the mercury, and it makes it more biologically available, more toxic. Do you smell that rotten egg smell?” Eagles-Smith asks from his mucky perch. “That is the smell of tiny organisms breaking down organic material. Those same organisms are the ones that take the mercury, the less toxic form of mercury, and convert it into the methyl mercury.”
Once it’s methylated, mercury has been shown to be a potent neurotoxin, Eagles-Smith explains. “It can influence stress hormones, thyroid hormones, and sex hormones so it can impact wildlife reproduction, fish behavior, their survival, their ability to hunt for prey or their ability to avoid predation.”
The unique rotten-egg decaying process that takes place in low-oxygen marshy environments like this means that wetlands could be hotspots for transforming inert mercury from coal into a more toxic and biologically-available form that can then make its way up the food chain, the scientists worry.
Emerging technology is helping scientists zoom in on more specific sources of mercury pollution in the environment. Mercury can travel in air pollution for thousands of miles. But scientists want to know if coal trains that pass through wetlands like this might serve as a sort of direct deposit of mercury pollution.
The USGS expects to have preliminary results within the next 6 months, though the researchers caution that this is a small sample size and more study is needed. The results will be shared with the state and federal agencies that are studying the environmental impacts of the two proposed coal terminals in the Northwest.
A new report by public safety agencies highlights several weaknesses in Seattle’s ability to respond to an oil train accident.
The report to the Seattle City Council was complied by the Seattle Fire Department and the Office of Emergency Management.
At the top of the report’s list of concerns: the 100 year old tunnel that runs through the middle of downtown Seattle. The report said that the lack of safety systems in the Great Northern tunnel will present significant challenges to first responders.
Next on the list: landslides along Puget Sound. The stretch of track between Seattle and Everett has banks that are prone to slides.
The report also found Seattle’s Citizen Notification System to be outdated. City officials could have to go door to door alerting residents in person in the event of an oil train emergency.
Train tracks are usually located in flat areas. In King County, that can also mean areas that are prone to liquefaction during an earthquake, the report found.
BNSF Railway spokeswoman Courtney Wallace did not respond to an interview request. She previously told Crosscut.com via email that the report’s recommendations were under review. She later added that BNSF is working to connect its communication system in the tunnel with a system the fire department uses and that the company is also making plans to provide mobile fan units at both tunnel-ends.
A BNSF Railway oil train derailed in Seattle in July. No oil was spilled.
Especially volatile crude from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota is being transported by rail to refineries and ports throughout North America — including in the Northwest. Between 8 and 13 oil trains traveling through Seattle each week, according to rail industry reports made public this year.
As soon as you arrive in Sekiu, Washington, you get a whiff of salty ocean air laced with the unmistakable smell of fresh fish. The scent fills your nostrils as the gulls mew nearby, fighting for the remains of the day’s catch in the protective cove.
Located 20 miles east of Neah Bay by car, the fishing village has a long reputation for good salmon fishing. It’s also where we pick up the trail of the Lake Washington chinook. The subset of the Puget Sound salmon were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1999 and traced here by scientists who tag them.
The fish spend their adult lives in this open ocean before heading home to spawn in the Cedar River or in Bear Creek, or the state hatchery in Issaquah.
‘A Surprisingly Quiet’ Season
(Justin Steyer/KPLU)
Pulling into Sekiu, one might expect a bustling fishing village with flotillas of boats hooking plenty of salmon, perhaps because the summer’s headlines have touted a record run of Columbia River chinook.
Towns like Westport have been booming with the projected return of 1.5 million chinook, also known as king salmon. Anglers at Buoy 10 on the river this year reportedly spent more time looking for a place to set up their gear than they did reaching daily limits, thanks to successful management of the dams, hatcheries and habitat down south.
Also often mentioned in the reports are favorable ocean conditions that have allowed more adult fish from the Columbia River system to survive. But those ocean conditions aren’t doing much for the fishing in Sekiu.
“It’s surprisingly quiet. Usually one of the peak times of the year is right now,” says veteran guide, Roy Morris, a life-long salmon fisherman who has kept a charter boat at the docks in Sekiu for 20 years.
Unusually Warm Water
Morris says there has been a steady decline in fish stocks. And this year, he says everyone there is reporting “one of the lowest year of catches for salmon, particularly Chinook.”
Roy Morris examines his line. (Justin Steyer/KPLU)
One reason, he suspects, is unusually warm water, which he says it’s been about 5 degrees hotter than normal.
“We’ve been seeing it on our instruments on our boat all year long. We couldn’t believe our instruments were correct when we saw 58 degrees, where usually it’s 49, 52,” he says. “And that changes the conditions for feed for the salmon as well as their desire to be in that warmer water.”
The warm water off the Northwest coast, which is linked to one of the hottest summers the region has ever seen, is what’s believed to have caused a record number of sockeye to bypass Sekiu and many other ports in Washington in favor of cooler waters in Canada. Morris says it probably hasn’t helped the chinook here, either.
“It is surprising, because I know there’s many people working together to try to improve conditions and survival for salmon, but it’s up and down from year to year within a decade, [and] this year is some of the lowest catches for Puget Sound chinook that we’ve ever witnessed,” he says.
‘We Have Only One Chinook In The Freezer’
Ocean conditions are a bit of a black box for scientists; they know that huge percentages of the young salmon that leave fresh water never return as adults, but information about why is scarce. The recent launch of an international research effort, the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project, seeks to fill the information gap.
But for Morris, it’s just one of many causes. For another, he cites the influence of hatchery fish that are released in droves and feed on limited food sources “like a herd of sheep” while wild fish trickle out gradually. But he links most of the fish’s decline to urbanization and development that destroys fish habitat.
He remembers the days of his youth in the 1950s and ‘60s when salmon fishing was such a popular family vacation that you could hardly find a place to park your boat in places like Ilwaco.
“Because it came with a bounty of fish that were canned and smoked and frozen, so that after your vacation you ended up with two or three hundred pounds of salmon,” he says. “Now, we have only one chinook in the freezer, where last year, we had 15, so we’ll be fishing hard [for the rest of the season].”
Why The Chinook Is King
Chinook hold a special status in the world of sport fishing.
Roy Morris’ wife, Nancy Messmer, holds up a chinook salmon she caught off the coast of Sekiu, Washington. (Courtesy of Nancy Messmer)
“[It’s] called the king because it’s the biggest and the most spectacular,” Morris says, noting that sometime his guests get frightened by how long and hard they’ll pull on a line. Morris calls them “the long distance runners.” He notes that Columbia River chinook traverse nearly the entire state and reach Canada before coming back home. And his favorites, the Puget Sound chinook, even climb mountains.
“They go right to the North Cascades,” he says. And they enjoy iconic status, with tourists coming from all over to seek them out. They’re also some of the tastiest, with firm flesh, he says, “because it chored higher and higher into the watersheds.”
And they get harder to catch at this time of year, when their bodies start changing with physiology that signals it’s time for them to head to home waters and spawn. They lose interest in food, presenting extra challenges for anglers who use special lures and techniques to hook them.
“There’s slang talk like ‘slack jaw’ and more formal talk is ‘waiting fish.’ They’re not so much chowing down to build their body,” he says. “Reproductive capabilities are being developed more than muscle tissue. And as that chemistry changes, their desire to return to the natal stream and spawn overrides their desire to hunt and feed.”
‘I’m Here As A Witness To The Process’
Roy Morris, left, and his wife, Nancy Messmer. (Justin Steyer/KPLU)
Morris is not just a seasoned salmon fisherman; he’s exceptionally passionate about saving the fish. He says he caught his first salmon when he was 5, helped his grandson catch one at age 4 and wants that lineage to continue. But does he ever think it would be better to stop hunting an endangered species?Yes, he says, but as long as the fishing is allowed, he wants to be part of it.
“I’m here as a witness to the process,” he says. “I’m not fishing greedily to catch the last salmon, but I am participating in the seasons and open times that you can enjoy the sport.”
By being out on the water 100 days a year and also volunteering on boards as a representative of sport fishermen, he feels his perspective is an important contribution to augment data sets collected by government agencies. And he sees part of his role as educating the public about endangered fish and the issues they face.
There’s Hope Yet
Nancy Messner looks out at her line. (Justin Steyer/KPLU)
“The chinook is one of the more fragile of the spectrum of salmon in the Northwest,” he says. He remembers when they were first listed 15 years ago and the fishery was closed. He thought it might never reopen, that their declines had gone too far.
“But where barriers are removed, they’re amazing the way that they’ll try to fight for their survival if they’re given half a chance,” he says.
One only needs to look to Issaquah Creek and its Salmon Days festival for evidence, he says. In places where habitat has been restored and fish protected with policies, the fish do come back.
“At one time, those stocks had dwindled to just such small numbers, people had never even seen them or knew they were in the river. Now they throng and there’s a celebration … with booths and festivals, and people hanging over bridges,” he says. “That just is testimony to that if you give’em a chance, they will survive.”
And he sees another ray of hope in the recent return of chinook to the Elwha River, where the nation’s largest dam removal has just been completed.
“We saw fish in a habitat that there had not been wild salmon in for 100 years,” he says. “It’s just evidence that fish can return if they’re given a chance and proper conditions.”
A member of the Olympic National Park fisheries team snorkels just above the remnants of Glines Canyon Dam. Three Chinook salmon were sighted during a snorkel survey this week. NPS photo
Following an observation by a fisheries biologist and member of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe of a possible Chinook salmon in the former Lake Mills, two Olympic National Park fisheries staff conducted a snorkel survey of the Elwha River above the old Glines Canyon dam site.
They found three adult Chinook salmon, all between 30 and 36 inches long, in the former Lake Mills, between Windy Arm and Glines Canyon. Two fish were seen resting near submerged stumps of ancient trees;the third was found in a deep pool in the former Lake Mills.
“When dam removal began three years ago, Chinook salmon were blocked far downstream by the Elwha Dam,” said Olympic National Park Superintendent Sarah Creachbaum. “Today, we celebrate the return of Chinook to the upper Elwha River for the first time in over a century.”
“Thanks to the persistence and hard work of many National Park Service employees, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and many other partners, salmon can once again reach the pristine Elwha watershed within Olympic National Park,” said Creachbaum.
In addition to the three Chinook, biologists counted 27 bull trout, nearly 400 rainbow trout and two small sculpin during their survey above Glines Canyon.
The biologists began their snorkel survey in Rica Canyon three miles above the old Glines Canyon dam site. They then snorkeled downstream through the Canyon, through the former Lake Mills and downstream to a point just above Glines Canyon.
Last week, park biologists confirmed that two radiotagged bull trout had migrated through Glines Canyon and were in Rica Canyon. The three Chinook observed this week were not radiotagged, but were seen by observers on the riverbank and in the water.
The following day, biologists counted 432 live Chinook in a 1.75 mile section of river just downstream of Glines Canyon, but still above the old Elwha dam site.
Elwha River Restoration is a National Park Service project that includes the largest dam removal in history, restoration of the Elwha River watershed, its native anadromous fisheries and the natural downstream transport of sediment and woody debris. For more information about this multi-faceted project, people can visit the Olympic National Park website at http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/elwha-ecosystem-restoration.htm.
