THE PROBLEM

Each summer, salmon battle worsening conditions on their journey through the heart of Seattle in the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Because of lethally hot water temperatures in the waterway starting just upstream of the Ballard Locks, only a fraction of salmon reach their spawning grounds in the Cedar and Sammamish Rivers. These Pacific Northwest icons are on a path to extinction and it’s happening in Seattle’s own backyard.
High water temperatures have been a problem in the Lake Washington Ship Canal for more than two decades, and the problem is only getting worse. There are a few deeper locations in the Ship Canal with colder water, but they often don’t have enough oxygen for the fish to survive. The warmer water also provides favorable conditions for invasive fish that eat young salmon.

At the Locks, salmon migrating up or downstream must transition between cold saltwater and hot freshwater within a few hundred yards. These changes have major impacts on juvenile and adult salmon, including delayed or blocked migration, higher mortality due to increased susceptibility to diseases, fungi, and parasites, and even death.

THE SOLUTION

To tackle this complex problem, Long Live the Kings (LLTK) and the Lake Washington/Cedar/Sammamish Watershed (WRIA 8) Salmon Recovery Council are working with a network of public agencies and community organizations to lower water temperatures and help salmon pass safely through the Ship Canal. This effort builds on more than two decades of research and management actions related to the problem.

We are seeking ways to create a continuous pathway or connected pockets of water within the Ship Canal where water temperatures and oxygen levels are within the healthy range for salmon, allowing them to migrate freely.
At the same time, urgent short-term solutions are also needed to support the salmon runs while a long-term fix is in progress. These actions could include changes to operations and redesigning fish passage at the Ballard Locks. As Seattle’s summers get warmer, experts agree that we need to pursue multiple strategies to prevent the loss of these salmon runs now and for generations to come.

PROJECT STATUS

Phase 1 of the work to address warm temperatures in the Ship Canal, completed in July 2022, focused on reviewing the science and aligning partners around a mutual goal, and prioritizing promising solutions for further analysis. In Phase 2 which began in 2023, the group is completing an initial feasibility analysis, pursuing water temperature modeling, developing strategies to implement solutions, and supporting ongoing work. Phase 3 will put the solutions into action.

THE PROBLEM

For decades, coho salmon in urban streams across the West Coast have been dying from exposure to stormwater runoff – water that washes from roads, carrying with it a wide variety of pollutants. In 2020, researchers at Washington State University Puyallup and University of Washington Tacoma determined that a chemical called 6PPD-quinone was responsible for the harmful effects.

6PPD-quinone is formed when particles of tire dust react with tropospheric ozone as they wear off onto roads. When it rains, this transformational contaminant washes into stormwater and can end up as effluent into waterbodies like streams and rivers. It represents a huge threat to coho survival: between 20 percent and 90 percent of coho die within hours of exposure to contaminated stormwater. Recent studies found that it is harmful to Chinook and steelhead as well.

THE SOLUTION

In 2022, Long Live the Kings, the Nisqually Indian Tribe, and other partners tested a compost-based biofiltration system along State Route 7 to collect and clean stormwater before it reaches Ohop Creek. This project was the first in-situ test of Cedar Grove’s compost-based containerized mobile biofiltration system designed to capture and filter stormwater runoff from bridges, elevated roadways, and other structures.

The goals of the project were to:

• Test the effectiveness of Cedar Grove’s biofiltration system
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the secondary phosphorus polishing layer at removing excess phosphorus
• Provide baseline data to assess whether the technology could serve as a regional stormwater management tool
• Determine if the system would be recommended to move forward through the Washington Department of Ecology’s TAPE pilot implementation process

PROJECT STATUS

This year, the team completed the technical report for the project’s initial data collection. The project highlighted that addressing stormwater runoff near coho-bearing streams is essential in our region’s efforts to recover salmon populations, especially in urban watersheds.

Based on the results, this stormwater biofiltration system has the potential to significantly reduce toxic stormwater runoff, and with a few adjustments, excess nutrients. In addition, the toxicology results support that the biofiltration treatment system shows promise as a solution for treating large quantities of roadway runoff before they enter receiving waters.

Moving forward, we will be using an accredited laboratory that has detection limits that align with the requirements in the TAPE guidance document. Additional water quality monitoring will provide the project team with enough data to determine whether this technology can move forward with the TAPE process at this project site. The project team that contributed to this project and its results look forward to expanding upon these findings once funding is secured for future sampling of qualifying storm events.

THE PROBLEM

Pacific herring are a key link in the Salish Sea ecosystem, with cultural and economic significance in addition to their critical role in the marine food web. Herring populations have been declining for decades, with several spawning stocks at a fraction of their historical numbers. Their decline poses a huge challenge for salmon recovery.

The Salish Sea Marine Survival Project found a close link between forage fish abundance and juvenile Chinook salmon survival: forage fish like herring are both an important food source for salmon themselves, and an alternative prey source for predators like harbor seals (meaning that fewer salmon get eaten when herring are abundant).

THE SOLUTION

Long Live the Kings is working with the Nisqually Indian Tribe, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, and additional partners to understand and recover declining Puget Sound herring stocks. In a series of experiments, we are testing whether a method adapted from traditional Indigenous techniques can be used to supplement spawning habitat and boost herring populations. More broadly, we are working to understand how habitat and predators are impacting herring spawning, and to improve herring management and recovery to benefit salmon.

Coast Salish and Alaskan Tribes have a long-standing practice of sinking cedar and hemlock trees in nearshore waters during spawning season to collect herring eggs for harvest. Eggs stick to the tree branches as they would to eelgrass or other marine plants. In partnership with the Nisqually Indian Tribe and Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, we are adapting this practice as a potential tool for herring management and recovery.

PROJECT STATUS

In January, before herring spawning season begins, our team submerges evergreen trees and boughs at several depths in the Nisqually Reach and Port Gamble Bay. The evergreens are monitored regularly throughout the spawning season (January to June) to check for herring eggs. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife monitors herring spawn in Port Gamble Bay, a known spawning area, while our team checks for herring eggs while monitoring eelgrass beds and other potential spawning habitat in the Nisqually Reach.

In 2022, LLTK and the Nisqually Tribe began catching adult herring in the Nisqually Reach to determine their ages, sexes, and reproductive maturity, hoping to find mature herring that may be spawning nearby. Genetic analysis of these adult herring will help us learn more about herring populations in South Sound.

THE PROBLEM

Steelhead migrating out to the Salish Sea have a very low survival rate. Up to 50% of juvenile steelhead that make it to the Hood Canal Bridge do not survive past it. The fish swim near the surface, where the bridge pontoons create an obstruction, increasing fish densities and making the steelhead more vulnerable to predators.

These fish can take a day or two to find their way past the bridge, when normally they take just a few hours to travel a similar distance through open reaches of the canal. Light, shade, and noise from the bridge may lend an advantage to predators but do not appear to directly contribute to fish mortality. Furthermore, certain portions of the bridge appear to collect plankton, encouraging hungry Chinook, chum, and forage fish to linger at the bridge, which could increase their susceptibility to predation.

Water quality modeling also shows that the bridge impacts temperature, salinity, and currents down to ~65 feet below the water surface and up to 3 miles away from the bridge. This dual threat to fish and their ecosystem may be limiting the effectiveness of millions of dollars already spent recovering steelhead, salmon, and their habitat in Hood Canal.

THE SOLUTION

Long Live the Kings, in partnership with the Hood Canal Coordinating Council, Tribes, and state and federal agencies, is working to address high steelhead mortality at this floating bridge.

During Phase 1 of the project (2017 and 2018), the team tagged and tracked nearly 500 juvenile steelhead and collected data on light, noise, fish density, predators, currents, and temperatures. Based on this research, engineers and fish passage experts are working with the team to develop near-term mitigation strategies to help fish pass the bridge more quickly and deter predators from foraging near the bridge.

In 2022, Long Live the Kings awarded a contract to Global Diving and Salvage to build the first fish guidance structure for the Hood Canal Bridge. Engineers from Kleinschmidt Associates and Art Anderson Associates designed this structure to help guide fish around the bridge more quickly. Global and their partners at Pacific Netting Products constructed the high-density polyethylene (HDPE) floating structure.

PROJECT STATUS

In Spring 2023, along with our partners, we successfully deployed and tested the guidance structure to see if we can help the steelhead find their way around the bridge. Our partners at NOAA and the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe monitored juvenile steelhead and salmon migrating around the bridge during deployments of the guidance structure. The structure was tested every other week for six weeks, with the off weeks used as experimental “controls” to see what the survival and fish passage timing was like without the structure in place.

We hope to see data in early 2024 confirming that the structure helps more fish make it safely past the bridge while we continue to work on long-term solutions, including fundamental changes to the bridge’s design. We will construct an additional guidance structure and deploy two in spring of 2024. If after two years of testing, we see a reduction in steelhead mortality, then we will look to develop a mitigation plan to operate the fish guidance structures in the near-term while we develop long-term solutions.

THE PROBLEM

The survival of juvenile Chinook, coho and steelhead (wild and hatchery) in the Salish Sea has declined, in some cases to less than one-tenth of the levels experienced in the 1970s and 80s. For some populations, mortality rates in the Salish Sea are so high that less than 15 percent of the fish departing their natal rivers make it to the open ocean, jeopardizing fisheries and making freshwater habitat restoration less effective.

To understand and address the causes of unprecedented levels of juvenile salmon and steelhead mortality in the Salish Sea, Long Live the Kings has facilitated the completion of thousands of hours of highly specialized and advanced research from over 200 scientists as part of the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project and Hood Canal Bridge Ecosystem Impact Assessment.

To ensure that everyone can learn from this research in a world seeking increasingly interactive, entertaining, and emotional communication experiences, our community needs an engaging approach to convey our rather complicated scientific understanding.

THE SOLUTION

LLTK and our partners use high-tech acoustic tags to track steelhead migration from their natal rivers in Puget Sound to the Pacific Ocean. Most of these fish will not survive the journey but learning where they perish can help determine how they are dying and provides a framework to address the underlying causes. Recognizing that data gleaned from this tagging process could also be used to create a competitive game that visually demonstrated the problems our research has uncovered, LLTK created Survive the Sound.

After the project’s successful pilot year in spring 2017 with the assistance of Paul G. Allen Philanthropies, LLTK partnered with NOAA to create a no-cost educational toolkit for classrooms. The toolkit, combined with other improvements to the game, encouraged local businesses to sponsor the program as an annual campaign. Impressively, over 90% of participants reported that they were more likely to change their behavior to protect salmon and steelhead after participating in the game.

PROJECT STATUS

Survive the Sound 2023 took place from May 1-5 and brought in more players than ever before. LLTK saw more than 25,000 registered accounts, nearly 20,000 of which were students under the age of 18. In addition, our 902 registered teacher accounts self-reported serving over 100,000 students throughout their schools and communities, meeting an objective from our strategic plan.

Looking toward the future, we worked with a team of MBA candidates from the University of Washington to create a marketing and sponsorship strategy for Survive the Sound, and we are excited to put their ideas into action. LLTK will continue to expand the reach of Survive the Sound, bringing salmon education and recovery efforts to a wider audience each year.

THE PROBLEM

Long Live the King’s Salish Sea Marine Survival Project showed that healthy estuaries are a critical need for young Chinook salmon: without functional estuary habitat, small salmon are less likely to survive to adulthood. Over the past century of industrialization, the Duwamish estuary has lost 97% of the habitat it used to provide these fish. Wild salmon – including Chinook and steelhead – are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, making salmon recovery a priority throughout Puget Sound.

THE SOLUTION

Vigor engaged Long Live the Kings and the University of Washington’s (UW) Wetland Ecosystem Team in evaluating a restoration project along the Harbor Island shoreline within the Duwamish estuary with the goal of creating much-needed functional estuary habitat for juvenile salmon.

To measure the effectiveness of restoring this working shoreline habitat, a team of LLTK and UW scientists has developed a before-restoration baseline by sampling fish and insects at the restoration site and a nearby “reference site” with natural shoreline.

The before-after comparison will provide insight into whether blue-green infrastructure approaches are an effective technique for creating functional estuary habitat along working shorelines. If so, Vigor and LLTK plan to promote the effort and support other businesses and landowners interested in adopting similar restoration projects to maximize impact and support salmon recovery.

PROJECT STATUS

The restoration along Vigor’s shoreline is complete! We are planning for post-restoration monitoring in 2024 and 2025 with UW scientists, who will measure improvements in habitat function, showing before-after comparisons of insect abundance, and presence and feeding of fish in the newly restored intertidal area relative to the reference site. We hope that the fish and insect communities in the restored working shoreline habitat will be more like those in the natural shoreline habitat.

THE PROBLEM

Several scientific studies show that these kokanee from the late run have a unique genetic signature, having adapted over the centuries to the unique Lake Sammamish ecosystem, making them impossible to replace.

THE SOLUTION

In 2019, King County contacted Long Live the Kings and asked us to apply our successful conservation hatchery practices to help recover the kokanee population in Lake Sammamish. We were excited to be able to participate. Kokanee fry are transferred from Lake Sammamish to Glenwood Springs where they are raised in cool, clean water for about 27 months until they spawn. We then care for their eggs as they grow. Raising the young salmon at Glenwood Springs provides protection from hazardous conditions in Lake Sammamish, like high temperatures, low dissolved oxygen levels, predators, and disease.

Once the incubating eggs have “eyed up” we fly them to the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery where they continue to grow. The juvenile fish are later released into Lake Sammamish to boost the local kokanee population.

PROJECT STATUS

Long Live the Kings currently has two kokanee populations at Glenwood Springs. One population of about 200 kokanee, which will spawn in winter 2024. In August 2023, about 250 salmon fry (young salmon) were brought to Orcas Island where they will grow for a few years until they spawn.

This operation is part of a captive broodstock program, which is expected to yield as many as 50,000 healthy young kokanee returning to Lake Sammamish over several years, helping to ensure the survival of a native salmon that was once a reliable food source to Tribes, the basis for a robust fishery, and that is still important to the region’s biodiversity.