Snorkeling the Dungeness River at night recently gave Byron Rot a new appreciation for the fish he works hard to protect.

“The river is fast, steep and strong. It’s a hard river to crawl up while snorkeling and surveying, much less swim, especially if you’re a tiny juvenile salmon,” said the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s habitat manager. “The old management practices that led to a straight and steep river have really impacted the fish and where they can live.”

Rot, eight other snorkelers, and four data recorders, spent a recent Thursday evening on a three-quarter mile stretch of the river near Railroad Bridge Park in Sequim. The group was looking for fish especially around the logjams the tribe had built in 2007 and 2008 to create salmon habitat in a stretch of river nearly devoid of it.

The Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe conducted a fish survey at night of the Dungeness River recently with the help of others, including Dave Shreffler of Shreffler Environmental. Shreffler gets ready to dive back into the river.

The snorkelers counted fish by species and estimated their lengths. Every 75 feet or so, they’d pop up out of the water and call out counts and observations to a data recorder on the bank. Findings included bull trout, steelhead, cutthroat, coho and chinook. All salmon species except sockeye live in the Dungeness.

“We found fish where we expected to find them – mostly in quieter pools of water that had been created by our jams or other natural wood, and very few fish in the faster water,” Rot said.

The tribe plans to work with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to continue monitoring the river on a regular basis.

Rot hopes that gathering information like this can be eventually translated into public outreach tools for landowners that live near the river.

“People see the beauty and power of the river, but they have no idea of what it is going on under the surface,” Rot said.

Partners in the effort included Shreffler Environmental, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Olympic National Park and Tetratech Inc.