Squaxin Island Tribe's Natural Resources

The Squaxin Island Tribe and the Washington Department of Fish teamed up this past June to release thousands of coho fry into Spurgeon Creek a tributary of the Deschutes River.

You can watch videos of the release here  and here

The Deschutes River system used to have a robust run of naturally spawning coho. This ended in the late 1980’s due to habitat degradation in coho spawning areas and decreases in marine survival along the entire west coast. Coho salmon generally spend 1.5 years in freshwater and 1.5 years in the ocean. This makes them especially vulnerable to changes in stream habitat and ocean conditions.

Coho salmon return to the stream they were born after three years. This means that a run of coho is made up of three different year classes or cohorts. In the late 1980’s one of these cohorts was considered essentially extinct because it was not producing enough fish to maintain the population. Starting in the mid 1990’s a second cohort also became functionally extinct.

Yearly plantings of juvenile coho will likely continue while in-river restoration and conservation projects are implemented and studies on the impacts of ocean conditions  such as the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project continue.

Return of adult coho to the Deschutes River 1980-2014:

Return of adult coho to the Deschutes by cohort/year class 1997-2014

The 2016 South Sound Science Symposium http://southsoundscience.org/ was held at the Little Creek Event Center on September 20^th. There were over 450 attendees making 2016 the largest event yet for South Sound.

Topics included:

• Nisqually Community Forest – process, analysis of ownership, how it can be used as a salmon recovery tool
• Active tectonics in South Puget Sound
• Landslides, Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Volcanic Eruptions: They all happen in Washington. Why? What does it cost? What can we do?
• Sea level rise, Budd Inlet
• Shoreline armoring data
• An updated groundwater model for regional planning – Chambers-Clover Creek Watershed, Pierce County
• Modeling trophic interactions in South Sound
• Beach spawning, forage fish monitoring
• LOTT’s Reclaimed Water Study: What we have learned so far about residual chemicals in our local waters
• New science documenting toxic impacts on salmon and other aquatic species
• Exploring drivers of fecal coliform pollution trends in South Puget Sound
• Nisqually Community Forest VELMA modeling

In addition to the speakers there were 23 poster presentations.

Poster abstracts can be found here: http://southsoundscience.org/agenda/posters/

Copies of the presentations can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7QIg0n4iR3cbllTVkhpVHBXMTQ

Speaker abstracts here: http://southsoundscience.org/agenda/speaker-abstracts/

Registration is now open for the 6th South Sound Science Symposium to be held September 20th at the Little Creek Casino Event Center.

Registration information, a call for posters and general information can be found here at the Symposium website.

We are pleased to announce the kickoff of a project designed to restore the Goldsborough and Shelton Creek estuaries in Shelton Harbor. When complete the project area and other high quality habitat in the harbor will be placed into permanent protection.

Existing conditions.

Conceptual design for the completed project.

The overall project involves-

Landowners: Simpson Lumber, Sierra Pacific Industries and the Port of Shelton.

Partners: South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group, Mason Conservation District, Capitol Land Trust and the Squaxin Island Tribe.

Funding obtained to date has been provided by the Washington Department of Ecology National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant Program (information here) and the Salmon Recovery Funding Board (SRFB, information here). Significantly, all of the Lead Entities present in South Puget Sound contributed to the project enabling the SRFB to increase the amount of money available.

The project is large in scope and when complete will:

• remove 811 creosote pilings
• remove 1/2 mile of armored shoreline
• remove 1/4 mile of inter-tidal dikes
• restore 47 acres of saltmarsh
• restore 1/2 mile of shoreline riparian
• conserve 51 acres of tidelands and over 14 acres of riparian upland

The partners are currently in the permitting phase and anticipate construction to begin in the summer of 2017. To keep informed of the project status we have created a website sheltonharbor.org. Check in regularly for updates.

The sixth South Sound Science Symposium will be held September 20th, 2016 at the Little Creek Resort Event Center. A save the date announcement and a call for poster abstracts can be found here.

It’s that time of year when classrooms take a day to go on an end of the year field trip, somewhere fun, but somewhere educational.  On Tuesday May 24th, Griffin School and Olympia Regional Learning Academy (ORLA) kindergarten classes planned a trip to Burfoot Park along Budd Inlet, where they were greeted by Squaxin Island Tribe Natural Resources staff  in scuba gear and two wading pools full of sea life.    “It’s always fun to do this for the students.  To see the excitement in these young learners faces when we come to shore in all our scuba gear is priceless,” says Joseph Peters, Natural Resources Policy Representative for Squaxin Island Tribe.

This is the second year that Griffin School kindergarten classes have coordinated with Squaxin Island Tribe Natural Resources to have a “touch tank” of sea life for the class to learn about.  It was great that we could extend this to be a full day event so ORLA could participate in all the fun.   The hope is that we can make an impression on these young students about the importance of the Puget Sound and the life it contains.

Joe Peters and Scott Steltzner of Squaxin Island Tribe Natural Resources answer questions about Puget Sound sea life.

“Watching them interact with the sea stars, crabs, moon snails, and other sea creatures is amazing.  We like to keep our eye on those kindergarteners that stay around the touch tank the longest.  Those kids are our future marine biologist or scientists”, boast Peters.  There are plans to do this again next year with Griffin and ORLA. Squaxin Island Tribe Natural Resources does a number of educational outreach activities throughout the year.  Over three days in late April the Tribe and Shelton School District conducted the First Grade Field Experience.  First graders from Evergreen, Mountain View, and Bordeaux Elementary visited Arcadia Point where Squaxin Island Tribe set up three exploration stations and traditional story telling station.  Explorations stations included touch tank, watershed demonstration, and scavenger hunt.

Candace Penn, Joe Peters, & Scott Steltzner of Squaxin Island Tribe Natural Resources discuss Puget Sound sea life with Kindergarteners.

This year’s forecasts for coho coming back to the deep South Sound show the lasting impact of poor marine survival caused by the recent Pacific Blob, a large area of warm ocean water. For example, this coming year, only 1,800 coho that originated from the Squaxin Island Tribal net pens program are expected to return.

Usually over 25,000 Squaxin net pen coho return yearly from 1.8 million released. Historically, the net pen program’s survival has been as high as 3 percent in recent decades, but has dipped down to 1.1 percent the last few years. This year, the fish produced by the program will likely only have a 0.117 percent survival rate.

And, this is because of the lasting impacts of poor marine survival caused by the blob, even though it likely died this last fall.

Coho returning this year still spent enough time in the ocean that their survival was hurt by the blob’s warm water conditions.

NOAA fisheries recently pointed out how the area of warm water in the north Pacific Ocean turned everything upside down in terms of the ocean food chain:

“When young salmon come out to sea and the water is warm, they need more food to keep their metabolic rate up, yet there is less available food and they have to work harder,” said Elizabeth Daly, an Oregon State senior faculty research assistant with the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies, a joint program of OSU and NOAA.

“Our long-term data set contradicts the long-held assumption that salmon eat less during warm-water regimes,” Daly added. “They actually eat more. But they still don’t fare as well. When the water is warm, salmon are smaller and thinner.”

During the last two years, an unusually large, warm body of water has settled into the ocean off the Pacific Northwest that scientists have dubbed “The Blob,” which is forecast to be followed this winter by a fairly strong El Niño event. Though recent spring Chinook salmon runs have been strong due to cooler ocean conditions in 2012-13, the impact of this long stretch of warm water on juvenile fish may bode poorly for future runs.

“So far this year, we’ve seen a lot of juvenile salmon with empty stomachs,” Daly said. “The pressure to find food is going to be great. Of those fish that did have food in their stomachs, there was an unusual amount of juvenile rockfish and no signs of Pacific sand lance or krill.

“Not only does this warm water make it more difficult for the salmon to find food, it increases the risk of their own predation as they spend more time eating and less time avoiding predators,” she added.

The blob being replaced by a strong El Niño still means bad news for salmon survival.

El Niño is generally a warming of the Pacific Ocean that will likely last at least through this spring.

Last year’s returns of pink and coho salmon showed the devastating impacts bad marine survival can have on fisheries. Squaxin tribal fishers spent several frustrating weeks last fall landing fewer coho that were undersized as well.

Many of the fish we caught were about half the size of the fish we usually see. This was hard on our fishermen because for the same effort, their landings had much less value.

The Squaxin Tribe practices a protective fishing regime, focusing its efforts away from bays and harbors where wild coho congregate, fishing instead where plentiful hatchery-origin fish hang out.

Poor marine survival threatens the return of hatchery fish too, and will continue to hurt the tribe’s fishing-based economy and local sport fisheries. The Squaxin net pens program releases 1.8 million coho each year. When these fish returning as adults, they contribute to both sports fisheries through out Puget sound as well as tribal fisheries.

This decline in coho is devastating for both tribal and state-managed fisheries.

The Squaxin Island Tribe, working with our partner the South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group http://spsseg.org/, recently completed a project to remove a boat ramp and large concrete structure that had  been used as a boat basin.

Both of these structures blocked the natural movement of sediment down the beach. Why is this important? This beach materiel is used by sand lance and surf smelt to lay their eggs. These, and other fish, are called Forage Fish because they provide a critically important food base for salmon and other creatures in Puget Sound. Blocking natural sediment movement causes the beach to cut down decreasing the available space for forage fish to spawn.

Before: Boat ramp with marine railway.  The concrete blocks sediment from moving as shown by the elevation difference on either side.

Before: Boat basin that had been used as a “dry dock” by the previous owner. This structure blocked sediment from moving down the beach.

The energy generated from waves breaking along the beach at an angle moves sand and sediment along the shoreline. We call areas where this happens over long stretches of beach Drift Cells as the sediment tends to drift or move in one direction. Structures located on the beach can block this sediment movement causing the beach to pile up on one side and down cut on the other.

In the early 2000’s the Tribe initiated a project to identify and rate beach sediment sources within Totten Inlet. The drift cell along the project area was found to be one of the longest in all of South Sound. This drift cell was rated as having a good sediment supply, called feeder bluffs as they feed sediment to the drift cells, and was found to be in generally good shape. Three structures were identified that blocked sediment movement down the beach. The first of these, the Arcadia Point boat launch, was fixed in 2011 when a solid concrete ramp was replaced with one that had channels that allow sediment to flow through.

Arcadia Point Boat Launch. Sediment channels are placed between concrete planks allowing sediment to flow through from left to right.

The other two structures were the Collier boat ramp and jetty. Sediment can now move unimpeded on this over five mile long drift cell.

After: The boat basin has been removed. Sediment can now flow down the beach unimpeded.

You can watch a YouTube video showing the construction project here:

Pictured: Will Henderson (Fisheries Biologist), Daniel Kuntz (Fish Biologist), and Candace Penn (CC Ecologist Trainee)

Photo credit: Sarah Zaniewski

Some of you might be wondering what we as a tribe are doing about climate change? How is Climate Change effecting our first foods like shellfish, salmon, and harvestable plants? As the Climate Change Ecologist Trainee for the Tribe these are things I think about quite often. I have collected various graphs, charts,and images that I hope will resonate with you about what climate change is and how first nations are being affected. You will see two Links below, The first is a short video about indigenous people and climate change. I have also attached a presentation that I presented to our tribal council and I felt as though I left them wanting more information about Climate Change here in the Pacific Northwest. I hope you as well are left wanting more information, I would be happy to email anyone more links and media that illustrate issues related to climate change or just sit down and talk about Climate Change. Stay tuned for my next exciting post about Ocean Acidification!

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