Since 2015, LLTK has been coordinating a team effort of federal, state, Tribal, and nonprofit partners to solve extraordinarily high mortality for juvenile steelhead at the Hood Canal Bridge. The Hood Canal Bridge Ecosystem Impact Assessment showed that up to 50% of steelhead smolts die attempting to pass the bridge, making it one of the deadliest infrastructure barriers for salmon in Washington State. In April 2022, NOAA published new tracking data, drawing a more detailed picture of how the bridge delays steelhead migration and makes them easy prey. Based on this research, this summer LLTK awarded a contract to build and test a fish guidance structure – a giant floating “fillet” to help young fish navigate past the bridge’s problematic corners (and local predators) more quickly. Next spring, our partners at NOAA and the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe will be monitoring juvenile steelhead and salmon passage with and without the fillet in place, hoping to see evidence that it helps more fish survive.

Building and testing the fillet is possible thanks to funding support from the Washington State Legislature and the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, a first step towards reducing this roadblock for threatened Hood Canal steelhead and salmon. If successful, additional fillets could be constructed to boost survival and buy time for these populations. In the long run, it’s clear that a new bridge design will provide the best path forward to keep both fish and people moving safely across the canal.

Seattle’s Lake Washington Ship Canal was built a century ago to connect Lake Washington to Puget Sound. The Canal created today’s major shipping lane but radically changed the environment, rerouting rivers and leaving salmon with a difficult artificial path to their spawning grounds. The negative impacts to salmon runs are now growing more urgent due to climate change. During the summer, when sockeye, Chinook, and coho must pass through the Canal on their return to the Cedar and Sammamish Rivers, they face abrupt transitions between salt and fresh water, harmful high temperatures, and low dissolved oxygen. These conditions leave salmon vulnerable to predators and disease, draining their energy or killing them before they can spawn. Building on decades of work by led by the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, Suquamish Tribe, and state, local, and federal partners, LLTK is partnering with the WRIA 8 Salmon Recovery Council to coordinate a broad effort to find and implement solutions. This fall, we released a Phase 1 Report, outlining the most promising alternatives and laying the groundwork to make the Canal’s waters cooler and less deadly for Seattle’s iconic salmon runs.

“The waterways that make this region so beautiful are also complex, living things. Human behavior, trade, and now climate change impact these ecosystems in a myriad of ways, including by changing the temperature of the water in certain places, further endangering our already struggling salmon populations. Supporting salmon restoration is foundational not only to the health of our regional waterways but to the survival of our Orcas and more broadly to the culture of the Pacific Northwest. Thank you to Long Live the Kings for working collaboratively with WRIA 8, the Suquamish and Muckleshoot tribes, and other partners to work to address rising temperatures in the Ship Canal and support salmon survival.”
– Jeanne Kohl-Welles, King County Councilmember

Survive the Sound had a record-breaking year, with more than 25,000 people and nearly 1,000 classrooms following the epic journey of steelhead to the ocean! New this year, racers could experience the entire migration in English and Spanish, and explore perspectives on salmon recovery with Tribes and marine scientists across the region.

STS highlights:
Surviving fish: 7
Most popular new fish: Hank
Grand Prize winners: Fox 13 and Emerald Hills Elementary Lakers
Thanks to Fox 13 for donating their prize to Liberty Ridge Elementary School!

With the recent discovery that a chemical derived from car tires is extraordinarily lethal to coho salmon, finding ways to clean roadway runoff before it reaches salmon streams became more urgent than ever. We teamed up with the Nisqually Indian Tribe, Cedar Grove, Herrera, and many more to pilot a mobile biofiltration system using compost to clean polluted stormwater near restored salmon habitat near Mount Rainier. Water samples collected during rainstorms in early 2022 show preliminary, but promising, signs that this unique system can safely remove contaminants from tire dust and other toxic chemicals from stormwater in sensitive salmon habitat. Read more in our guest blog post from the Nisqually Salmon Recovery magazine Yil Me Hu.

For young Chinook salmon, estuary habitat is a critical key to survival: this is where they eat, grow, and prepare to enter the ocean. The Duwamish Estuary at the heart of Seattle’s industrial waterfront has lost more than 97% of the habitat it once provided for these fish. Our partners at Vigor believe that working shorelines can be managed to benefit salmon and the environment, and they’re leading the way by restoring 2.6 acres of habitat to create a pocket of estuary habitat in their Harbor Island shipyard. LLTK is working with the UW Wetland Ecosystem Team to monitor how salmon and their food sources respond to this new shoreline “rest stop”. This summer, we toured the restoration area with community members, salmon scientists, and local leaders to learn about the work in progress. The restoration is expected to be complete in time to welcome young salmon next spring. Learn how our partners at UW collect the contents of salmon stomachs to study the effectiveness of this project from scientist Arielle Tonus Ellis.

One of the central findings of the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project (SSMSP) is that without a healthy marine food web, juvenile salmon have an uphill battle to survive. The combination of estuary and nearshore habitat loss and climate change means that salmon’s key food sources are less abundant and less predictable, and that restoration and monitoring of the Puget Sound food web is essential for salmon recovery. To help local salmon recovery planners act on these findings, this spring we published a toolkit of recommendations based on the SSMSP in partnership with Envrionmental Science Associates, emphasizing actions to improve food supply, increase estuary restoration, and improve monitoring programs. Alongside local projects adapted to the diverse watersheds of Puget Sound, recovering Puget Sound salmon also requires ongoing research that looks across the ecosystem. This summer, LLTK joined the Tulalip Tribes for a two-week voyage to collect data on juvenile salmon and their prey across the length of Puget Sound. Just like an annual checkup, monitoring surveys need to be done regularly to give scientists the best information about how salmon and their food sources are responding to changing environmental conditions. Because this data is so important for management and recovery planning as climate change advances, we’ll be joining Tribal and other partners to secure long-term funding for continued fish monitoring research across Puget Sound.