salmon Archives - Page 5 of 16

Going For Launch With The Salmon Cannon

Washington Deparment of Fish and Wildlife crews load 30-pound fall chinook salmon into the salmon cannon. The cannon sucks the fish up to a truck at 22 miles per hour. The fish will then be driven to a nearby hatchery. | credit: Courtney Flatt

WASHOUGAL, Wash. — Salmon may soon have a faster way to make it around dams. There’s a new technology that’s helping to transport hatchery fish in Washington. It’s called the salmon cannon — yes, you read that right.

First, let’s set the record straight: there’s not really an explosion. But the salmon cannon does propel fish from one spot to another.

That was demonstrated Tuesday, when the salmon cannon transported fish from southwest Washington’s Washougal River to a nearby hatchery. The goal is to make the move easier on the fish, in three steps.

Watch the video: The Salmon Cannon In Action

First, the cannon: A long, flexible tube stretches out of the river. At one end, crew members wade into the river. They heave up a 30-pound fall chinook salmon and lift it into the tube.

The fish is sucked up the 110-foot tube at about 22 miles per hour. And then it plops out into a truck filled with water and swims around.

“It’s almost magical the way the fish will move through the system. It’s like a slip and slide, going uphill,” said Vince Bryan, the CEO of Seattle-based Whooshh Innovations, the company that’s engineering the salmon cannon.

After the truck is filled with about 100 fish, they’ll be driven to a nearby hatchery. These fall chinook salmon will be used to help breed next year’s hatchery runs for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Eric Kinne, the department’s hatchery reform coordinator for southwest Washington, said the fish are less stressed with the salmon cannon. Before this, salmon were transported with a forklift and tote container.

“We would have to fill it with water and put the fish in. Then we’d have to turn it around and haul it up to the landing area and then dump them into a truck. It was very hard on fish,” Kinne said.

The salmon cannon technology was first used as a way to transport fruit. Bryan said the hope is that it will one day transport fish up and over large dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.

“We’ve actually had even early discussions with getting fish over dams like the Grand Coulee. We’re starting out much smaller than that, obviously,” Bryan said.

It’s also a way to keep hatchery fish out of the natural spawning grounds of wild fish, Kinne said.

The unit demonstrated Tuesday cost about $150,000, he said.

So does the salmon cannon hurt the salmon? Kinne said the state Department of Fish and Wildlife tested out the salmon cannon with steelhead before putting it into action. They compared fish transported with the cannon to fish transported by hand.

“We held them for six weeks to see if there was any difference in mortality, or difference in condition of fish, and no. Everything was really good,” Kinne said.

Every once in awhile, a small salmon will get stuck in the tube, which is designed to operate with fish 15 to 30 pounds. Crews can then send either a water-soaked sponge or a larger salmon to help move it up the tube.

Yakama Nation tribal fisheries are also testing out a salmon cannon in central Washington.

Story and audio by Courtney Flatt. Video by Aaron Kunz and Courtney Flatt.

Biologists Try To Figure Out Large Fall Chinook Runs

By Courtney Flatt, Northwest Public Radio

A chinook salmon photographed in the Snake River in 2013. That year's run set records. Biologist aren't sure exactly why fall chinook runs have been so high in recent years. | credit: Aaron Kunz — A chinook salmon photographed in the Snake River in 2013. That year’s run set records. Biologist aren’t sure exactly why fall chinook runs have been so high in recent years. | credit: Aaron Kunz

Thousands of fall chinook salmon are swimming up the Columbia River every day right now. This year’s migration is expected to be one of the largest in recent years. Researchers aren’t sure exactly why fall chinook have made such a big comeback.

Salmon and steelhead restoration has been a big push throughout the Northwest — from Puget Sound to coastal streams to the Columbia-Snake River Basin — where fall chinook were nearly extinct by the 1960s.

Billy Connor is a fish biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service based near the Clearwater River in Idaho, where many of these fish end up.

“There’s been an incredible amount of effort spent trying to restore salmon and steelhead populations throughout the Northwest. And the Snake River Basin fall chinook population is a pretty unusual case because it’s rebounded so dramatically,” Connor said.

He’s been researching fall chinook for 27 years, his entire career. For years, fall chinook weren’t the salmon people wanted to study. They weren’t as economically important or as tasty as the spring salmon runs.

But fall chinook have made a big comeback recently. Last year, a record 1.3 million fall chinook made the migration. This year’s run won’t break that record, but biologists say the numbers are still high.

And no one really knows why.

“We can’t point to any one action and say that’s it. That’s what did it,” Connor said.

There are good ocean conditions, habitat restoration, changes in dam operations, reductions in salmon predators and harvests. The list goes on.

Rich Zabel is the director of the fish ecology division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Science Center. He understanding which factors help and which hurt fall chinook populations will help recovery efforts.

Zabel said one factor that’s overlooked is the fish’s adaptability. Historically, fall chinook spawned in sections of the river now blocked by the Hell’s Canyon Dam. Now, the salmon spawn on the Clearwater River and migrate at slightly different times of year.

“It’s taken the population a while to adapt. We’ve seen, over the last 20 years, some pretty major differences,” Zabel said.

Connor said teasing out the causes of these large numbers will be the study of his career.

He’s creating a computer model to narrow down the lengthy list of things that might be helping out the fall chinook runs. He says some pieces of the puzzle will affect salmon runs more than others.

To make the models, Connor and his team have been collecting data for 20 years. He says that’s why it’s taken so long to get to this point.

“These models are incredibly data hungry. There are thousands and thousands of bits of information that go into them,” Connor said.

Zabel said modeling like this, and other models that NOAA biologists are working on, shows how research and monitoring feed into management practices.

“As we’ve learned more and more about fall chinook through field research, we can understand through modeling and the collecting of data what the factors are that are harming the populations and can develop plans based on that information,” Zabel said.

Connor said biologists can apply what they learn with his model to help other salmon populations in the Northwest. He hopes to finish up this research by 2017.

Deadly Disease Detected in Lower Klamath Chinook Salmon, Water Flow Increased Again

Hoopa Valley Tribe/YouTubeThe Lower Klamath River needs more releases of water from the Lewiston Dam in order to avert fish catastrophe. — Hoopa Valley Tribe/YouTube
The Lower Klamath River needs more releases of water from the Lewiston Dam in order to avert fish catastrophe.

Indian Country Today, 9/17/14

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.”

Salmon habitat project on Smith Island to proceed

By Chris Winters, The Herald

EVERETT — The Snohomish County Council last week signed off on an agreement that brings it closer to creating salmon habitat on Smith Island.

The county plans to create a 350-acre wetland at the mouth of the Snohomish River. The $25 million project involves removing dikes and allowing the acreage to flood, turning it back into a saltwater estuary.

The plan has drawn opposition from businesses that share the island. They are concerned about effects on their properties from construction or saltwater flooding.

Those concerns range from construction traffic at Dagmar’s Marina, sedimentation affecting Buse Timber’s ability to float logs in the river, and saltwater degrading the soil at Hima Nursery.

The three firms, which comprise Diking Improvement District 5, had been negotiating the agreement with the county to clear the way for the project in exchange for assurances that it won’t affect their businesses.

The Snohomish County Farm Bureau plans to continue to challenge the project.

Wednesday’s decision followed a continuation of public comments from the previous week.

Ed Husmann, president of the Farm Bureau, listed a number of concerns his group has had with the project, including that the county hasn’t followed legal processes, that $25 million is an “absurd price” for a project that might return just 800 adult salmon to the area, that the county hasn’t fully investigated the project’s effects on a buried Puget Sound Energy natural gas pipeline, and that no science has been submitted that would show the project would succeed.

“This is not a restoration project,” Husmann said. “There’s no known document that shows Smith Island has ever been salmon habitat.”

Brian Dorsey, deputy prosecuting attorney for Snohomish County, said the signed agreement with the diking district doesn’t commit the county to the project or even authorize the project to begin but, rather, lays down the legal framework under which the project would operate.

The County Council would have to approve a separate ordinance specifically authorizing the work to begin, Dorsey said.

Debbie Terwilleger, the director of the county’s Surface Water Management Program, explained that the project is focused on the creation of habitat for juvenile salmon. The anticipated return of 800 adults to a revitalized estuary could produce up to 250,000 juvenile fish.

Steve Dickson, the special projects manager for the county Public Works department, told the council that the county will need to get approval from Puget Sound Energy before the project can commence.

That agreement should be worked out in the next couple of weeks, Dickson said.

The council voted 3-1 to approve the agreement with the diking district, with Councilman Ken Klein voting against it, citing his opposition to converting agricultural land into an estuary and the need to expand support for local farmers.

“Until I see a reversal of those trends, a reversal of the death spiral of the farming industry, I cannot support one acre being taken out of production in Snohomish County,” Klein said.

Council Chair Dave Somers agreed in spirit but felt that much of the loss of farmland in the county started with converting farmland to development, especially in the Marysville-Arlington area, and restoring salmon habitat was also a commitment the county had to keep.

“We do need to remember that we do have a commitment to everybody, but that doesn’t mean we stop everything in our fish and estuary restoration,” Somers said.

A New PNW Alliance Aims to Shield the Salish From Destruction

Native Americans, environmentalists, and fed-up citizens unite to keep corporations from turning the region into a fossil fuel corridor

The Nawt-sa-maat is fighting to save the Salish Sea from destruction. Photo by Kelton Sears

By Kelton Sears, Wed., Sep 10 2014, Seattle Weekly

On August 4, a dam holding back mining wastewater burst open in Likely, B.C., gushing roughly 6,604,301,309 gallons of toxic waste into the nearby lakes—a spill 78 percent larger than initial estimates. Only a month after the incident, Imperial Metals, the corporation responsible, declared the water safe to drink again.

“One of my friends caught a salmon alive and kicking there last week,” Sundance Chief Rueben George from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation said to a packed Seattle crowd at the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center on Sunday. “But when my friend picked it up, the fish’s skin slid off in his hands.”

Salmon have long been spiritual symbols of the Pacific Northwest—aquatic residents of the Salish Sea that have given life to Coast Salish people for 14,000 years and white settlers for 150. That the skin of the Northwest’s spirit animal is melting off is just one of many reasons organizers say they are forming the brand-new Nawt-sa-maat Alliance, a group that has vowed to defeat oil and coal corporations bent on turning the Pacific Northwest into a fossil-fuel corridor.

Nawt-sa-maat, a Coast Salish word that means “One house, one heart, one prayer,” is an unprecedented trans-border coalition of Coast Salish indigenous nations, environmentalists, interfaith groups, and youth activists that met for the first time this past weekend in Discovery Park. The Alliance’s goal? “To protect the sacredness of the Salish Sea.”

“The tribes are the original environmentalists,” Annette Klapstein, a member of the Seattle Raging Grannies and a new member of the Nawt-sa-maat Alliance, said at the initial meeting on Sunday. Klapstein was one of three protesters who sat on train tracks in Anacortes to block the controversial “exploding” oil trains in July. It was her first direct action after years of fruitless writings to the Seattle City Council and visits to Olympia to persuade politicians to do something about the influx of dangerous rail cars.

“It was always very iffy for tribes to work with environmental organizations because these organizations were arrogant,” Klapstein said. “They would tell tribes what to do, which didn’t go over very well. This new alliance, based on respect and understanding, is so important because these different groups’ goals are much the same, and we are so much more powerful together.”

Chief George (right) with civic leader and alliance co-founder Jon Ramer (left). Photo by Kelton Sears

Chief George, one of the three main founders of the Nawt-sa-maat, presided over the initial meeting and made it clear that one of its biggest enemies was the massive energy company Kinder Morgan. “We stand as one, and together we will protect and restore the sacredness of the Salish Sea,” he said. “Together, we are stronger than those who wish to use our home and waters as a mere highway for dirty oil and coal. Together, we will stop them. Kinder Morgan will not win this battle.”

Formed by Richard Kinder, an ex-Enron employee, the oil mega-corporation is proposing a massive $5.4 billion oil pipeline connecting the Alberta tar sands to the Pacific through Burnaby, B.C., tripling current capacity and creating the potential for enormous spills in the North Salish that would directly affect us in Washington. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been pushing the project despite massive backlash from British Columbian activists and the indigenous Tsleil-Waututh, who are now taking the project to court for failing to consult with the First Nations tribe on the federal review.

“You know, I’d like to thank Stephen Harper,” said Nawt-sa-maat co-founder Chief Phil Lane Jr. of the Yankton Dakota and Chickasaw First Nations, “because in his complete unawareness, he’s awakened a sleeping spiritual giant.”

The mood at the meeting was intensely spiritual at times. Four local religious leaders, a United Methodist, a Buddhist, a Sufi, and an Interspirit, came together to bless the gathering in their respective traditions, ending with an indigenous cedar-bough blessing that the crowd happily lined up to receive. Many of the religious groups present vowed to convert their houses of worship to solar energy in an act of good faith.

Being a member of the Nawt-sa-maat effectively means a couple of things. Members are expected to join in a “4 Days of Action” campaign, starting on Sept. 19, that ranges from a salmon homecoming celebration to a climate-change rally at the Canadian border and ends with an international treaty signing that will effectively ratify the new trans-border Nawt-sa-maat Alliance. Members are then expected to join in future actions and work to build the nascent network, which will soon expand its scope to tackle the proposed coal-extraction sites at Cherry Point, sacred land to the people of the Lummi Nation near Bellingham.

“I just want to make this very clear,” Chief George said as he doled out salmon to the Nawt-sa-maat near the meeting’s end, “this Alliance isn’t just for one group. It’s for everyone. The Salish Sea is for everyone, not just corporations. We will win this fight.”

Radio transmitters lead biologists to salmon

Gary Chittim, KING 5 News

NEAR ENUMCLAW, Wash. — Tribal Biologist Justin Paul said a program that uses radio transmitters is designed to help slow down the number of salmon dying. The salmon in question were captured at a dam near Buckley then trucked around the dam and released upriver.

Paul said a number of factors could cause the deaths, including predators like otters and bears, injuries suffered during capture or the stress of being loaded into tanks and trucked around the dam.

When they are captured at the dam, workers insert radio transmitters into wild, female chinook. The tiny wires put off a strong enough signal to be picked up by a hand-held receiver. Paul walks up and down the river until he gets a ‘hit’ then follows it to the fish.

Sometimes they are just carcasses left behind by predators, sometimes they are fish that died naturally after spawning, and sometimes they are alive and tending to their nests, or redds.

By locating the salmon, they can get an idea of problem areas in the river system and places where salmon need more protection or more access.

Marine Survival Project Looks at Salmon Poisoning Disease

Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Steelhead out-migrating from North Sound rivers appear to have better marine survival than steelhead smolts from South Sound, and researchers are studying salmon poisoning disease as a potential cause.

Salmon poisoning disease, or Nanophyetus salmincola, is best known as the parasite that can make dogs sick when they eat raw salmon. It also has been found to affect the swimming performance of infected salmonids, potentially reducing their marine survival.

Fish pathologist Martin Chen is studying steelhead smolts for the NWIFC as part of the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project. Chen is sampling steelhead from the Tahuya, Skagit, Snohomish, Green and Nisqually rivers.

“We thought Skagit and Snohomish would be negative for the parasite based on historical records, and that was true,” Chen said. “We found lots of heavily infected fish in the Green and Nisqually rivers. I can see the parasite even as I’m dissecting them. Parasite numbers are as high as 18,000 per gram of kidney tissue.”

Both of those results were expected, but Chen was surprised not to find the parasite in any of the 24 steelhead sampled from the Tahuya River in Hood Canal. The Tahuya is across the canal from the Skokomish River, which has Nanophyetus in at least three tributaries.

South Sound fish also have their marine survival challenged by swimming through the Tacoma Narrows and Point Defiance, and facing more predation from seals. To make a more even comparison, researchers placed infected South Sound fish and uninfected North Sound fish in the same saltwater environment to compare survival. After 90 days in saltwater tanks at the USGS Marrowstone Island Laboratory, both groups had the same high survival rate.

“The fish from the Green River are still heavily infected,” Chen said. “It’s possible that infected fish have some disadvantage and they’re less able to escape predators. They don’t just hit the salt water and roll over and die.”

Chen also is testing drugs that could eliminate the parasite from infected fish. Two drugs are being tested on small numbers of coho at the Nisqually Tribe’s Clear Creek Hatchery, with some coho getting a 24-hour bath of each drug, and other fish having a drug mixed in their food. None of the fish from this initial test will be released or eaten.

“If the drugs were effective and you were rearing fish in a parasite-positive environment, you could clean up a group of fish before releasing them,” Chen said. “You would no longer have to compare survival of fish between two river systems, making our studies more valid. In addition, being able to eliminate Nanophyetus before release could have a practical application for Northwest hatcheries.”

Conservation Groups Concerned Oil Spill Would Harm Wildlife

An oil train moves through Skagit County in Western Washington, headed to refineries in the Northwestern part of the state. | credit: Katie Campbell

Courtney Flatt, Northwest Public Radio

As more oil trains travel along the Columbia River and Puget Sound, conservation groups worry that cleanup plans could harm sensitive wildlife, like endangered salmon and shorebirds.

That concern is prompting legal action. The Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Columbia Gorge Thursday filed a 60-day notice to sue the U.S. Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency. The conservation groups say the oil spill response plan needs to be updated to account for endangered species.

Jared Margolis, an attorney for the center, said the response plan hasn’t been updated in 10 years. That means the plan doesn’t include new wildlife habitat and new species on the Endangered Species List, like smelt, also known as eulachon.

“If those spill response plans aren’t up-to-date, they could boom the oil right into critical habitat for endangered species, which can really impact the salmon and sturgeon.” Margolis said.

Margolis said the Gulf Coast’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill taught conservation groups that cleanup efforts, like burning oil and mixing oil with the dispersants, could harm endangered species.

An EPA spokeswoman said she could not comment on pending litigation. She said cleanup plans in the Northwest include monitoring for endangered species.

Nisqually Tribe working with neighbors to restore Ohop Creek

Kyle Kautz, Nisqually tribal natural resources, collects fish from a pool in the former Ohop Creek channel.

Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

This summer, the Nisqually Tribe, the Nisqually Land Trust and the South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group are tacking on another 1.5 miles of restored habitat to Ohop Creek.

“In this stretch of creek, salmon aren’t really given much space to feed or hide,” said David Troutt, natural resources director for the tribe. “We’ll be restoring the creek back to a natural shape and giving the salmon the habitat they need to survive.”

Over a century ago farmers turned the creek into a straight-flowing ditch in an attempt to dry out the valley floor and create cattle pasture. However, deep clay deposits in the soil continued to hold water year round, and despite the failed effort to completely dry the valley the stream remained channelized.

“It went from a shallow, meandering stream that was very good for salmon to a straight ditch,” Troutt said.

The Ohop Creek restoration will include digging an entirely new channel as well as adding other features, such as logjams and deep pools, that will provide habitat for salmon.

Salmon habitat restoration on the creek began in 2009 with a repaired one-mile channel just upstream of the new site. That channel was constructed to restore a sinuous stream that connected to its floodplain. The floodplain, now replanted with native vegetation, re-creates 80 acres of healthy riparian habitat that controls water temperatures and stabilizes the stream banks.

The project partners have already documented the progress of the upstream restoration. “We’ve seen a lot of changes, down to the types of birds that visit the site,” Troutt said. Early results include increased use by salmon and the return of wildlife species, such as elk, that had not been seen in the valley for decades.

Ohop Creek is one of two major tributaries to the Nisqually River that can support chinook salmon and steelhead, both of which are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. “Because there are only a few places other than the mainstem of the Nisqually River where they can spawn, increasing the quality of habitat in those places is important,” Troutt said. Ohop Creek also supports coho and pink salmon and cutthroat trout.

“Throughout Puget Sound, we’re seeing available salmon habitat continue to disappear, despite millions of dollars spent to restore and protect it,” Troutt said. “There is no larger threat to treaty rights than lost salmon habitat. Projects like this are a small step to reversing that trend.”

Storm drains with a message

By Brandi N. Montreuil, Tulalip News

TULALIP – Through the summer break, 175 storm drains on the Tulalip Indian Reservation received a mini makeover due to a collaborative effort between Tulalip Tribes Natural Resources department and the Goodwill Aerospace Program.

Receiving help from 20 students from the Marysville/Everett area who participated in the Goodwill Aerospace program, the drains, located near the Tulalip Resort Casino, Totem Beach Road and Totem Beach Loop Road, now display a stenciled salmon graphic and custom message reading, “No Dumping; Drains to Salmon Habitat.” Tulalip Natural Resources hopes the message will remind the public of the risks salmon habitat face.

“Many people have the misperception that a drain in a street or parking lot is sent to a wastewater treatment plant, but it is not,” explains Valerie Streeter, Tulalip Natural and Cultural Resources stormwater planner. “ After a rain storm, stormwater runoff enters the drain and is usually piped directly to a ditch, stream or bay with very little treatment. This water picks up heavy metals, copper from brake pads, Zinc from tires, and oils from engines, and delivers these pollutants to our waterways. Salmon are especially sensitive to copper, which alters their response to predators and damages their olfactory organs, how they smell. Zinc and oils also damage aquatic plants and animals.”

Students involved in the program were required to participate in service learning projects, which involves learning about the science and background of a project and then volunteer their time toward that project.

“Protecting our watersheds and salmon habitat are very important and we want the community to understand that dumping anything down storm drains can impair fish and other aquatic creatures because storm drains drain directly to streams, lakes, and even the bay,” said Kelly Finley, Tulalip Tribes Natural Resources Outreach and Education Coordinator.

Streeter explains that when people wash their cars or driveway and either dump or allow the dirty wash water into the storm drains, this contributes to water pollution. “It is better to wash your car on the lawn or use a car wash, which are connected to wastewater treatment plants. Pet waste is another common pollutant in our water, which can pass diseases on to other animals or even us humans.”

“The worst is an old practice of dumping used oil from an oil change into the storm drains,” said Streeter, who recommends discarding used oil at appropriate places, such as the automotive center at the Walmart Supercenter located in Quil Ceda Village, who will discard the oil free of charge.

For more information on how you can help in salmon recovery, please visit Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office’s website at www.rco.wa.gov/salmon_recovery/what_you_can_do.shtml.

Brandi N. Montreuil: 360-913-5402; bmontreuil@tulalipnews.com