Squaxin Island Tribe Tracking Coho in Sherwood Creek

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ALLYN – A pair of smolt traps is helping the Squaxin Island Tribe get a better picture of natural salmon production in the Sherwood Creek watershed.

“The Sherwood watershed is one of the most complicated systems in the tribe’s treaty-reserved fishing area,” said Joe Peters, fisheries management biologist for the Squaxin Island Tribe. Tribal biologists are unsure about how many coho are rearing annually in Shumacher Creek, a tributary to Sherwood Creek, which flows into Mason Lake. Sherwood Creek flows out of Mason Lake.

One smolt trap – a safe and effective devices for catching and counting juvenile salmon as they migrate to sea – is installed at the mouth of Schumacher Creek in the upper watershed just above Mason Lake. Another is operating near the mouth of Sherwood Creek close to where it enters Puget Sound.
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Puyallup Tribe “scouring for survivors” after floods

A reporter from the Puyallup Herald tagged along with some researchers from the Puyallup Tribe as they conducted their first salmon surveys after the damaging winter floods:

One of the major problems biologists see with flooding is what’s known as “scour.” High and often fast-moving water will “dig out all the eggs that were laid down,” said Marks, ruining chances for increased numbers of young fish. He noted that coho and chum salmon spawning “were more or less lost” during the recent flood.
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Port Gamble starts water quality and plankton monitoring programs

PORT GAMBLE BAY (July 9, 2008) – An upclose study of plankton in Port Gamble Bay and Hood Canal could provide telling results about the health of Puget Sound for the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries department.

The tribe is monitoring plankton levels along with water quality because plankton are the most basic level of the food chain for the marine ecosystem. The study will also show biologists how the ecosystem itself is changing.

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Rafeedie Decision

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After hearing testimony from tribal elders, biologists, historians, treaty experts, as well as testimony from private property owners and non-Indian commercial shellfish growers, Federal District Court Judge Edward Rafeedie followed…

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Biologists use high-tech equipment to spy on Skagit River chum

Tribes are working with Seattle City Light to study Skagit River chum. The P-I reports:

SEDRO-WOOLLEY — On the Skagit River, biologists netted a 3-foot chum salmon with stripes the color of a bad bruise and vampire teeth just beginning to show.

The fish will be dead within a month. But during the next few weeks, they’ll learn more than they have in the past 30 years about how this wild fish behaves.

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