This winter marks our third field season working with the Nisqually Indian Tribe on innovative research into herring populations. The study combines Indigenous knowledge with contemporary scientific methodology. We use a traditional practice of collecting herring roe on evergreen boughs alongside genetic analysis and habitat surveys. As with a lot of marine science, the most interesting parts of this study happen underwater. We were thrilled to be able to work with artist Rosemary Connelli to illustrate the process! These two infographic posters show the relationship between herring and salmon survival, and how this project uses Indigenous techniques to support research and recovery. Click the download links below to access PDF versions.
LLTK joins research network modeling Puget Sound ecosystems
Long Live the Kings is part of a new collaborative project led by the Puget Sound Institute to create the Puget Sound Integrated Modeling Framework (PSIMF). PSIMF will bring together five separate models of Puget Sound, helping scientists and planners understand the complex puzzle pieces of our region’s ecosystems from ocean to mountaintops.
Funded in part by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, PSIMF will enable better regional planning and decision-making by providing a cohesive picture of the entire Puget Sound ecosystem. Components of the integrated framework will model land cover, freshwater, marine, food web and human activity. Hem Nalini Morzaria Luna, a researcher with Long Live the Kings, works with the Atlantis Ecosystem Model to study the Puget Sound food web. This research is key to ongoing work from the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project to understand how factors at the base of the food web – including the influence of climate change – ripple up to affect salmon and other predators like orcas. By combining Atlantis with the four other models, PSIMF provides a powerful tool for shaping the path to salmon recovery as part of a sustainable future for Puget Sound.
Read more on PSIMF and the power of data-driven modeling from Puget Sound Institute.
In the late 1800s, settlers converted the Ohop Valley to pastures and farm fields, turning a once meandering Ohop Creek into a straight-flowing ditch to drain the valley for dairy farming. The process drastically transformed the landscape, reducing its ability to provide spawning and rearing habitat for historical salmon populations, including chum, pink, coho, and Chinook salmon, as well as steelhead and cutthroat trout. As a major tributary to the Nisqually, the loss of this habitat was detrimental to these salmon and has contributed to decreased populations and the listing of Chinook and steelhead as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Substantial work has been done to address the historic habitat degradation, however new science points to another more modern threat to salmon recovery.
Over the past 15 years, watershed partners have worked together to implement the Lower Ohop Creek Restoration Project, transforming the lower section of Ohop Creek and the surrounding valley, converting it back to what it looked like prior to settlement. Completed over two phases of construction, over 2 miles of Ohop Creek have been remeandered, derelict structures and invasive plant species removed, and large woody debris placed throughout the valley floor. As part of the restoration, nearly 200,000 native trees and shrubs have been planted across 180 acres of floodplain.
The restoration of Ohop Creek is a major step in recovering Nisqually salmon, but stormwater pollution that comes of off roadways has been recently identified as a major threat to recovery. Some of the harmful components of stormwater include heavy metals and microscopic tire particles. Traffic volume along Highway 7, which crosses Ohop Creek near the Town of Eatonville, has been on the rise due to population growth of the Puget Sound region resulting in more of these chemicals entering Ohop Creek. According to Washington State’s Department of Transportation’s 2019 annual average daily traffic data, assuming four tires per vehicle, roughly 12 pounds of microscopic tire particles are released at this site throughout the year. Scientists have recently discovered that these tire dust particles contain a chemical known as 6PPD-Quinone, which causes mortality in salmon, especially coho, in low quantities. The Nisqually Indian Tribe and Long Live the Kings have partnered with Cedar Grove, an environmental solutions company, to pilot a mobile biofiltration system designed specifically to capture and filter stormwater run-off from Highway 7.
In January 2022, the unit was installed between the two bridge crossings along Highway 7, in close proximity to Ohop Creek. The size of the unit allows for the collection of 91% of the roadway run-off. With each significant rain event, the system automatically collects water quality samples at three locations: where the run-off enters the filtration system, the middle of the system, and at the outlet where the water is discharged onto the Ohop Creek floodplain. The water samples allow researchers to test the effectiveness of Cedar Grove’s system at removing harmful contaminants. These samples are tested for their chemical and toxicological composition, including heavy metals, ammonia, dissolved organic carbon, total suspended solids, nitrates, nitrites, total phosphorus, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH’s). Additionally, the composite samples are shared with Washington State University to assess biological impacts and University of Washington’s Tacoma Campus to test for 6PPD and 6PPD-Quinone.
The biofiltration system is mobile, relatively inexpensive, and scalable for different stormwater filtration needs. If the system can safely remove harmful chemicals and prevent them from polluting salmon streams, don’t be surprised if you see the use of this system become widespread. In the very near future, stormwater filtration systems will go hand in hand with habitat restoration as a principal salmon recovery tool.
Fall 2022 Update:
By the end of April, the Ohop biofiltration system had encountered two significant rain events. As of November, preliminary data analysis shows positive signs that this system is effective at reducing heavy metals, water toxicity, and 6PPD-quinone to levels that are not detrimental to salmon. We hope to continue this study and look forward to sharing more results as they are available!
Learn more from the Northwest Treaty Tribes here.
Come along on a tour of the project site (via LLTK’s Instagram)!
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Authors: Ashley Von Essen is the Lead Entity Coordinator at the Nisqually Indian Tribe. Ashley Bagley is a Project Manager at Long Live the Kings. This article was originally published in the Summer 2022 issue of Yil-Me-Hu, the Nisqually Watershed Salmon Recovery newsletter. Read the full issue here.
Project partners include: Nisqually Indian Tribe, Long Live the Kings, Cedar Grove, Fremont Analytical, Herrera Environmental Consultants, Nisqually Land Trust, University of Washington at Tacoma, Washington State Department of Transportation, Washington State University at Puyallup.
Financial support for this project was provided by: Nisqually Indian Tribe, Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund, Royal Bank of Canada, Sustainable Path Foundation, and Washington Sea Grant.
What is blue-green infrastructure?
Every day we benefit from the natural environment around us. These benefits, called ecosystem services, have not always been acknowledged in urban planning. However, in recent years there have been efforts to strategically draw on nature to deliver benefits that fall under the umbrella of “blue-green infrastructure” (BGI). This term can have many definitions, but in its broadest form these are natural and semi-natural areas with land (“green”) and water (“blue”) features designed to manage and deliver ecosystem services. Sometimes these are just referred to as “green infrastructure,” but the recent addition of “blue” makes the central role of water in ecosystem services more explicit. So, what does BGI look like on the ground? You may already have some BGI features in your own backyard!
At the residential home scale, this can look like catching rain in rain barrels for irrigation in the dry season, controlling driveway run-off with natural mini wetlands (rain gardens), or planting more trees to shade the home, lower temperatures and reduce run-off. At a much larger scale, Hamburg, Germany launched a Green Roof Strategy with an ambitious goal to “green” at least 247 acres of rooftops in the city within one decade, to regulate temperatures and mitigate water runoff. Across the globe in the Yangtze River Delta of China, they are planning a 250-acre eco-corridor to transform an industrial area of Ningbo into a “living filter” with canals that mimic a floodplain, habitat for native plants and animals, and recreational, educational and cultural facilities. In cities and neighborhoods, these examples of blue-green infrastructure are addressing the impacts of climate change, such as floods and droughts, through water conservation, groundwater recharge, and reduced surface runoff.
Find out how to create your own rain garden with help from 12,000 Rain Gardens in Puget Sound.
Salmon here in the Pacific Northwest can also benefit from BGI practices. For example, BGI approaches to stormwater management can be used to keep rainwater from overwhelming sewer systems, which can contaminate the water and harm salmon in nearby waterways. In particular, runoff from highways has recently been linked to sudden death of coho salmon that were exposed to 6PPD-quinone, a toxic compound resulting from car tire wear. Studies are now underway to see how blue-green infrastructure can be used to address this issue. LLTK is working with the Nisqually Indian Tribe, Herrera, and Cedar Grove in Ohop Creek to test the use of a compost-based media, in a process called biofiltration, to filter out contaminants from roadway runoff. During the pilot project in early 2022, we collected stormwater samples to evaluate the performance of the biofiltration system at a site along a salmon-bearing stream. Biofiltration is usually used in bioswales or other systems permanently built into an environment. The system we used in this pilot project is mobile and containerized so the project team can easily remove the contaminated biofiltration media when necessary, making it a more flexible tool.
See more of the Ohop Stormwater Pilot in the Nisqually Salmon Recovery newsletter Yil-Me-Hu.
In the lower Duwamish River, the ship building company Vigor has partnered with LLTK and the University of Washington to assess a blue-green infrastructure project designed to create natural, estuarine habitat for salmon at Vigor’s shipyard on Harbor Island. This is an atypical “restoration” project, since Vigor is actually creating natural habitat on an artificial island that was built in the early 1900s to support industrial activities. The project goal is to create functional habitat that benefits salmon as they migrate out to the ocean through the Duwamish estuary. These pockets of habitat in an otherwise industrial landscape could provide rest stops for salmon during migration. The project is currently in the habitat construction phase, and the University of Washington and LLTK will assess the outcomes for salmon in 2024 and 2025. If the results show that salmon are using the habitat for resting and feeding, it will be a good indication that more “salmon rest stops” could help salmon in the Duwamish estuary.
Read more about the Vigor Urban Estuary Restoration.
LLTK seeks to better understand how we can use BGI in the Puget Sound to improve the health of our salmon populations. We’ll keep you posted on the outcomes of these BGI projects!
Shaara Ainsley is a senior project manager at Long Live the Kings.
Survive the Sound returns with new ways to experience salmon & steelhead migration
For immediate release: 4/27/22
Seattle – Thousands of salmon lovers in Puget Sound and beyond are signing up for the 6th annual Survive the Sound, a virtual race to the ocean that invites players to experience life – and maybe death – from the perspective of a young steelhead.
From May 2nd through 6th, participants watch on an interactive map as their fish embarks on a harrowing journey – avoiding predators, fighting disease, and navigating obstacles – on their way to the Pacific Ocean. Survive the Sound participants have until May 1st to pick their fish, build a team, and invite friends, family, coworkers, and classmates to race, competing to win a Grand Prize for the teams with the most surviving fish.
This free, interactive science game, based on migration data from real fish, is offered each spring by salmon recovery nonprofit Long Live the Kings (LLTK) to engage and educate the public about salmon and steelhead. Each of the race’s 48 creative fish avatars, most designed by artist Jocelyn Li Langrand, represents a real juvenile steelhead, implanted with an acoustic tag by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to study the alarmingly high death rates for these iconic, threatened Puget Sound fish.
“The threats to species like salmon and steelhead are serious issues, but Survive the Sound is a fun way to get involved in the science and learn that the challenges are solvable,” said Jacques White, Executive Director of Long Live the Kings. “We created the race to make salmon and salmon recovery accessible and engaging for everybody.”
Survive the Sound participants have until May 1st to pick their fish, build a team, and invite friends, family, coworkers, and classmates to race. From May 2nd through 6th, participants watch on an interactive map as their fish embarks on a harrowing journey – avoiding predators, fighting disease, and navigating obstacles – on their way to the Pacific Ocean.
Among the new fish joining the 2022 race are Hank and Cedar, designed by Native artists Jeanette Quintasket (Swinomish) and Paige Pettibon (Confederated Salish and Kootenai). Tribal governments, citizens, and staff are invaluable partners in salmon management and conservation in the Pacific Northwest and have provided integral support to Survive the Sound since the game began. This year, LLTK has partnered with the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and nonprofit Salmon Defense, with funding support from the Snoqualmie Tribe, to share resources on Tribes and salmon, highlighting treaty rights, cultural connections, and the leadership of Tribal communities in stewarding and recovering salmon today.
“What makes Survive the Sound so exciting is the large number of participants, integrating real data and spatial information about your own little steelhead, and the ability to track how many groups, schools and people participate in the program,” said Alex Gouley, habitat manager and Tribal member with the Skokomish Indian Tribe, who collaborated with LLTK on educational videos about the Tribe’s hatchery and habitat programs. “It’s important to the tribes because if we can enhance the participant’s knowledge of the salmon and habitat conditions then watershed resources will increase in value.”
“Our hope is that these educational materials will help Survive the Sound participants understand the role tribal natural resources managers play in salmon recovery, as well as the tribes’ connection to their ancestral lands,” said Peggen Frank, Salmon Defense Executive Director.
These resources will reach thousands of teachers and students, a core audience of Survive the Sound. This year, the entire Survive the Sound website, including classroom resources, is available in both English and Spanish, thanks to a grant from Boeing. Boeing’s support also funded educator tools exploring a variety of STEM careers, including interviews and live panels with local salmon scientists. Education research organization foundry10 has also contributed new marine science resources, as well as sponsoring this year’s educational Grand Prize of $1,500 for the school or classroom team with the most surviving fish at the end of the 5-day migration. The new lessons join LLTK’s suite of salmon education resources that support learning across multiple subjects, encouraging students of all backgrounds to see themselves as capable scientists, stewards, and advocates for salmon and the environment.
“We love how approachable this activity is for learners who adopt a salmon,” said Lindsay Holladay Van Damme, Marine Science Program Developer at foundry10. “Just by participating, the questions start to flow out: Why did another salmon make it further than mine? Why did more salmon survive in the next river over? And since it’s all grounded in local data, there is an abundance of resources for educators to facilitate deeper exploration of these real-world questions beyond the game.”
It’s free to sign up for the game, thanks to support from sponsors who see Survive the Sound as a fun and engaging tool to raise awareness about the challenges facing Puget Sound species. Support for Survive the Sound 2022 comes from Boeing, the Snoqualmie Tribe, the Nisqually Indian Tribe, Tacoma Public Utilities, Puget Sound Steel, MiiR, Anthony’s Restaurants, foundry10, Puget Sound Express, FOX 13, Pike Place Fish Market, Pike Place Chowder, Montana Banana, Herrera, Environmental Science Associates, Manulife Investment Management, the Stalcup Family, University of Washington, Floyd Snider, BECU, TOTE Maritime, and PCC Community Markets. Participants can also donate to Survive the Sound to support LLTK’s mission to restore wild salmon and steelhead and support sustainable fishing in the Pacific Northwest.
About Survive the Sound 2022:
Sign up for free at www.survivethesound.org by May 1.
Migration dates: May 2 – 6
General Public Grand Prize: Free chowder from Pike Place Chowder and a Hood Canal Bridge boat cruise with Puget Sound Express
Classroom Grand Prize: $1,500 educational grant from foundry10
How Survive the Sound Works
Each year, wild steelhead are caught as they make their way downriver from their birth streams. LLTK and partners implant the fish with tracking devices as part of their larger research efforts to understand juvenile salmonid survival in the Salish Sea. Each tag emits a unique acoustic ping heard by receivers placed underwater throughout Puget Sound. This tracking data can supply locations and sometimes depth and temperature. The steelhead in Survive the Sound represent real fish that were tracked in the past and scientists at LLTK pick a representative sample of 48 fish to include each year.
Why it Matters
Only about 15% of young steelhead survive their first trek through the waters of Puget Sound. The total number of Puget Sound steelhead at less than one tenth of the historic population and threatened under the Endangered Species Act. With these critically low numbers, the high mortality rate during the juvenile migration period is a key concern. “Unless we can better understand the reasons for steelhead’s decline in Puget Sound and mitigate the threats they face, there is serious concern that steelhead may slip into extinction,” said Jacques White, LLTK’s Executive Director.
Survive the Sound provides scientists with important new data about the steelhead lifecycle, gives the public an opportunity to engage with wild steelhead in a fun and interactive way, and raises essential funds for Long Live the Kings’ salmon and steelhead recovery projects.
To learn more, visit www.survivethesound.org.
About Long Live the Kings: Long Live the Kings is a non-profit salmon recovery organization based in Seattle. Since 1986, LLTK has been working to restore wild salmon and steelhead and support sustainable fishing in the Pacific Northwest.
Wild About Sustainability at Ray’s Boathouse
With Earth Day around the corner, it’s a great time to renew our commitment to sustainable choices that benefit the planet – and all of us who live here. In this guest post from our partners at Ray’s Boathouse, learn about their work to support sustainable salmon and seafood from the ground up. And if you’d like to pitch in this Earth Day, RSVP to join us on Friday, April 22 to restore Snoqualmie River riparian habitat!
Sustainability and the health of our local waterways has long been an area of focus for the ownership and staff at Ray’s Boathouse. We’ve always worked hard to educate our team about what they are serving, where it came from and how it was caught or harvested. We visit our fisherpeople and other purveyors to see where our product comes from and how they run their businesses.
Since Ray’s current inception in 1973 we have put sustainability at the forefront making sure we purchase fish and seafood from those harvesting humanly and protecting the waters they fish from. Ray’s was one of the first restaurants in Seattle to obtain a wholesale fish buying license that allowed us to buy directly from fisherpeople, and our founding partner Russ Wohlers had direct relationships, often traveling to see operations firsthand. All of this offered transparency—a value we hold dear. We often meet the people who were catching our seafood and see how they were doing it. It is important to know them and understand how we were supporting their businesses and families.
From the start we knew the importance of sourcing locally and guarding quality. We championed Salmon-Safe certified wine and beer from Washington and Oregon and were early adopters to the farm-to-table and sea-to-plate movements. These not only provide an incredible guest experience but makes our team proud to be part of a company that acts. One example is an incredible Salish Sea Chef’s Dinner we hosted at Ray’s with a group of beloved local chefs dedicated to sustainable seafood.
Nearly five years ago we took our efforts a step further and began partnering with Long Live the Kings to take an even larger role in the welfare of our local salmon runs. Through their deep knowledge and insights, we shifted our focus from one of sustainability to one of growth to ensure our salmon populations increase as our city and infrastructure continues to grow and change.
One shocking fact that stood out to us early in our partnership is that in the early 1980s there were nearly 1,000,000 Chinook salmon harvested here compared to about 200,000 in 2010. This made us want to dive in and ensure our salmon have healthy habitats and estuaries, a vital part of the ecosystem. We want to get back to the point where fisherpeople can sustainably harvest salmon from the Salish Sea as they did decades before.
Bottom line is that we do our best to ensure that our seafood comes from good people, good communities and will be sustainable. To achieve that we continue to evolve and listen to experts like Jacques White and the LLTK team about how we can help amplify their message and support their efforts.
On this Earth Day we encourage you to do the same. What can you do to help local salmon and steelhead thrive? Donate money (no amount is too small), volunteer for field work (here’s the Ray’s team cutting blackberry bushes and planting new shrubs along riverbanks), attend an LLTK event, share a social media post, raise your voice—it all matters and it all helps keep the momentum moving in the right direction.
Douglas Zellers is the general manager and co-owner of Ray’s Boathouse on the Ballard waterfront in Seattle.
The Madrona Club of Orcas Island has awarded Long Live the Kings a $5,000 grant through the Robin DiGeorgio Endowment Fund, to support our Glenwood Springs Hatchery programs. The Endowment funds charitable and educational endeavors on Orcas Island in memory of Robin DiGeorgio, a long-time Orcas Island resident, artist, and Madrona Club president, whose legacy continues to positively impact her community. Long Live the Kings is honored to be among this year’s grantees.
Glenwood Springs rears Chinook salmon to provide more fish for Southern Resident killer whales and for commercial and recreational fishing. We’re also able to test experimental practices to improve diversity and survival for hatchery-reared salmon. In a current study, we’re collecting data on whether different release timings for juvenile salmon leads to more, larger, and older fish returning to spawn. This research is critically important as our changing climate puts more pressure on the food web and salmon populations throughout the region. Our facility has also helped with efforts to recover Lake Sammamish kokanee from the brink of extinction, providing a protected environment to rear fish from this unique population and returning fertilized eggs back to their home waters.
In addition to our scientific work at Glenwood Springs, the hatchery is also an important part of the Orcas Island community. We’re proud to be a place where volunteers, students, and guests can come together to learn about salmon, practice hands-on stewardship of our natural resources, and build a sustainable future. We’re deeply grateful to the Madrona Club for sharing these values and supporting our hatchery and our fish.
The 7-year active research phase of the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project may have concluded with last year’s publication of the Synthesis Report, but that doesn’t mean the work is finished. Learning what causes Salish Sea salmon to die at alarmingly high rates as they enter the marine environment is just the first step for the SSMSP partners. Our ultimate goal is also to equip managers and decision-makers with science-backed strategies to increase their survival.
In February 2022, we released Local Level Salmon Recovery Recommendations Based on the Findings of the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project, a guidance document for local salmon recovery organizations in the United States to put these findings into action. LLTK worked with salmon recovery experts at ESA to create this document, in consultation with local salmon recovery organizations and Tribes, as a toolkit to incorporate the SSMSP’s findings into watershed-level planning and projects. The actions target the issues that the SSMSP identified as key limiting factors for marine survival: local marine food supply and predation hotspots, along with strategies to address contaminants, restore estuaries, manage water quantity, and continue essential monitoring and data collection. In combination with regional-scale tools, including regional recovery plans and co-management processes, this resource provides local entities with a roadmap to support ecosystem-wide recovery in ways that best align with local conditions and goals.
Read on for more background about the Local Guidance Document and a link to the full story on ESA’s website:
Developing Local Solutions
ESA’s natural resource specialists have worked with salmon recovery lead entities and the Puget Sound Partnership to integrate adaptive management and updates into salmon recovery plans. With this understanding of fish recovery needs, the collaboration with Long Live the Kings was a natural fit.
The Local Guidance document builds on SSMSP recommendations and presents strategies and actions for local entities to apply at the local scale. It details how groups can address local impacts on marine survival rates by improving fish habitat conditions while limiting predation, enhancing food supplies, and partnering with fellow conservation efforts to accelerate estuary habitat restoration.
“The Salish Sea Marine Survival Project gave us clear evidence that environmental changes, from estuary and nearshore habitat loss to climate shifts, have impacted the entire Puget Sound food web in ways that are limiting the productivity, survival, and fitness of our juvenile salmon,” says Jacques White, Executive Director of Long Live the Kings. “This guidance document translates those findings into management and restoration actions. ESA had both the science and policy expertise that were essential to connect the research to concrete steps. We hope this toolkit provides a timely ecosystem perspective to equip local and regional salmon recovery efforts.”
“The breadth and depth of issues that salmon recovery groups are being asked to tackle continue to grow as we learn more about what it is going to take to recover these species,” notes Senior Conservation Planner Susan O’Neil, who guided the creation of the guidance document.
O’Neil explains that local recovery strategies will need to apply a holistic approach to address the complex interconnectedness of environmental factors that are contributing to the low Chinook, coho, and steelhead numbers in order to increase survival rates and meet recovery goals.
Read the full article on ESA’s website here.
Download the Local Guidance Document for U.S. Entities.
Following major findings from the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project about the important connections between healthy herring and salmon populations, Long Live the Kings is working with Tribal and other partners on methods to study and recover declining Puget Sound herring stocks. Because the loss of eelgrass and kelp beds has degraded herring spawning habitat, the Nisqually and Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribes are testing traditional techniques used by Indigenous coastal people to encourage herring spawn by sinking evergreen trees in nearshore areas. More forage fish, such as herring, helps salmon survival by providing both a nutritious food source for young salmon, and alternative prey for birds and mammals that otherwise feed on juvenile salmon themselves. Read on for an excerpt from our funders at the SeaDoc Society about the ecological and cultural importance of herring and what we’re hoping to learn from this project. Find the full article at the link below.
Herring spawning stock has been in decline for decades and the concurrent lack of diverse spawning sites could have big implications on the Puget Sound and Salish Sea ecosystems. It’s an issue in urgent need of attention and action.
Herring are especially important to juvenile salmonids as post-hatch larvae and small juveniles, with larger juveniles and adults being important to larger juvenile, and then adult salmon, said Paul McCollum, the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s natural resources manager.
“Elders here talked a lot about the magic in January and February, that when the herring came into the bay to spawn, the whole world woke up, with salmon coming in to eat the herring, ducks, marine birds and many other fish. It was a very big deal,” he said. “Now the herring in Port Gamble Bay are a very small fraction of what they used to be, which is likely a major issue for the crisis in salmonid stocks here in Puget Sound.”
With salmon and herring so inextricably linked in the food web, recovering salmon and the Southern Resident orcas that rely on them is directly tied to the recovery of herring.
“We launched the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project with our partners at the Pacific Salmon Foundation 10 years ago because we knew that there were major unanswered questions about which factors were limiting early marine survival for Salish Sea salmon,” said Jacques White, executive director of Long Live the Kings. “The finding that herring stocks were so important for salmon growth and survival has led us to focus on these herring recovery efforts with our Tribal partners as a critical piece for salmon and the Puget Sound ecosystem.”
Read the full article from the SeaDoc Society.
Salmon and Floods
Our hearts are with everyone affected by the flooding in Washington and British Columbia this week. Intense rains and floods in the Northwest are becoming more common, a consequence of climate change. Major flooding is also a concern for struggling salmon populations. Fast-moving floodwaters can scour riverbeds, washing away salmon nests and juveniles in the gravel. At the same time, heavy loads of sediment washing into streams from runoff or landslides can smother eggs and fry.
Pacific salmon are adapted to dynamic rivers where flooding is a natural ecological process. Floods help shape habitat diversity that salmon need in their spawning rivers, creating log jams, side channels, and wetlands that are part of a healthy ecosystem. Human changes to the landscape, however, make it harder to absorb the impacts of flooding, at the same time as the warming climate means more rain and more severe floods. Deforestation makes hillsides more prone to erosion and landslides, which dump sediment into spawning habitat. Former floodplains drained for development or farming mean less room for floodwaters to spread out and slow down, putting both human infrastructure and salmon nests in harm’s way.
Along the Skokomish River, near our Hood Canal field station, the shallow stream channel naturally overflows during heavy fall rains. Today, this means the increasingly common sight of salmon crossing flooded roads in the valley. When the floodwaters recede, these fish are often stranded, unable to find their way back to the stream and their spawning grounds. For salmon populations already at risk, the combined effects of development and increasing floods are cause for serious concern.
In addition to taking action to limit climate change, communities and scientists are using green infrastructure to increase flood resilience for both salmon and people. Habitat restoration projects combat erosion and create areas where water can slow down and be safely stored in wetlands. Programs like Floodplains by Design work locally to protect farms and infrastructure from flooding, improving salmon habitat at the same time. Urban rain gardens store and clean stormwater before it reaches streams. These strategies work with natural systems to manage the risks from flooding, with mutual benefits for salmon runs and sustainable communities.
LLTK is concerned about the impacts these events have on salmon and steelhead as we face the reality that they are occurring more frequently. That is why we work with the Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Council, Tribes, local governments and businesses, our state legislature and Congress to identify and provide funding for the most important actions to help salmon recover and thrive in a changing climate. It’s also why we are building regional and international partnerships to better understand the impacts of climate change in both freshwater and marine environments. These recent events are a reminder of the force of nature, and how our shared decisions can affect outcomes for salmon and people.
Read more: 10 ways YOU can help salmon, including by starting your own rain garden.