Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

The Upper Skagit Tribe and the University of Washington (UW) are doing a two-year study examining seasonal habitat preferences for yearling chinook and steelhead in the Skagit River.

Not all juvenile chinook salmon migrate out to sea right away. They spend a few months to two years in freshwater and estuarine habitat. This study will help researchers learn more about the fish that stay in the …

Less than a year since the Elwha River’s two fish-blocking dams started to come down, native salmon have made their way deep into the Elwha watershed for the first time in nearly a century.

After the 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam was dismantled in March, an additional three miles of river habitat was re-opened for fish spawning, rearing and feeding. In June, a 35-inch long adult male wild …

Olympic National Park reported this week that its biologists have seen adult chinook salmon swimming two miles upstream from the park’s boundary in the Elwha River, above the old Elwha Dam site.

This comes two months after steelhead were seen swimming just above the old dam site by Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries biologists.

“Observation of these Chinook in Olympic

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The Stillaguamish Tribe’s Natural Resources Department began its annual broodstock collection today on the North Fork Stillaguamish River.

The adult chinook salmon will be spawned at the tribe’s hatchery, which has supplemented the declining population for more than 20 years.

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An important winter refuge for salmon and trout has been reconnected to Thirty Cent Creek, a tributary of the Sooes River on the Makah Tribe’s reservation.

“This project has been identified for some time and we were finally able to get the pieces to line up to make it happen,” said Ray Colby, water quality specialist for the Makah Tribe. Previously located on private commercial timberlands, …

The Stillaguamish Tribe’s captive juvenile fall chinook soon will have a new home. The tribe has converted an old trout farm into a hatchery facility at Brenner Creek on the South Fork Stillaguamish River.

The tribe expects the Brenner fish hatchery to be completed by the end of the year. The tribe has been rearing the fall juvenile chinook from brood years 2008, 2009 and 2010 …

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is taking a census of summer chinook and winter steelhead in the Elwha River before its two dams are removed in September by using a weir and a Dual Frequency Identification Sonar (DIDSON).

“Our aim is to establish a year-round counting station using the weir and DIDSON to evaluate salmon populations before and after dam removal,” said Keith Denton, a consultant …

National Public Radio has a story about the decline in phytoplankton in our oceans that results in less food for fish. Read it here.

Glaciers that feed the Queets and Quinault Rivers are just fractions of the size they were a few decades ago. As they recede, they threaten salmon stocks important to the Quinault Indian Nation.

“These glaciers once provided large amounts of cold water, year-round, that maintained higher summer flows, “ said Tyler Jurasin, QIN operations section manager. Lower flows mean less habitat for spring/summer chinook runs in …

The Sol Duc River on the northwestern Olympic Peninsula runs at its lowest and warmest when summer chinook return to its waters every year. Despite being in one of the world’s greatest temperate rain forests, near-drought conditions often occur in late summer before the fall rains begin in earnest.

“These fish are survivors,” said Roger Lien, fish biologist for the Quileute Tribe. After four to five …