Salmon

Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, students gather data from Tumwater Creek

Lucas Verstegen, left, and Tyler Hansen, students at North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center, prep a smolt from Tumwater Creek for identification. To view more, click on the photo.
Lucas Verstegen, left, and Tyler Hansen, students at North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center, prep a smolt from Tumwater Creek for identification. To view more, click on the photo.

A group of teenage “citizen scientists” have been helping the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe this spring by studying an urban creek that hasn’t been looked at in nearly 30 years.

Students in the North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center’s (NOPSC) natural resources class helped install a smolt trap on Tumwater Creek in early May. Students and volunteers check the trap daily to count and identify the fish, measure water temperature and take pictures.

“We’ve been smolt trapping fish on the Olympic Peninsula for 31 years, but this is the first time we’ve had one in Tumwater Creek,” said Kim Williams, a tribal natural resources technician. “Tumwater Creek is historically known to have a salmon run, but currently we have no fish data after 1991 for this stream.” (more…)

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Read more about the article Jamestown S’Klallam reconnects creek to strait to save fish
Jamestown S'Klallam tribal staff dig out a channel in a sandbar that is blocking the flow of Seibert Creek to the Strait of Juan de Fuca due to low water flow.

Jamestown S’Klallam reconnects creek to strait to save fish

Jamestown S'Klallam tribal staff dig out a channel in a sandbar that is blocking the flow of Seibert Creek to the Strait of Juan de Fuca due to low water flow.
Jamestown S’Klallam tribal staff dig out a channel in a sandbar that is blocking the flow of Siebert Creek to the Strait of Juan de Fuca due to low water flow.

The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe is starting to see the effects of this year’s predicted low water flow in the Dungeness River Valley much sooner than anticipated.

Tribal natural resources staff discovered this week that the mouth of Siebert Creek had been cut off by a sandbar – a typical problem with the creek during a low water year.

But this year’s low flows are more severe than usual due to the record-low snowpack in the Olympic Mountains.

“We never consider low flows in the spring because we typically have more water coming down the creeks,” said Chris Burns, Jamestown natural resources technician. “But when McDonald Creek started looking really skinny, I started getting really worried and checked Siebert. (more…)

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Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe uses sonar to count fish in Elwha River

Sonar is helping the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe get an accurate estimate of some species of salmon returning to the Elwha River.

The Tribe has been counting the number of returning adult chinook salmon and steelhead using a sonar camera since 2008 with positive results.

The camera is placed just below the water’s surface, sending out sound beams that “hit” a fish and reflect back to the camera. The camera is connected to a computer that translates the sound beams into pixels that are counted as fish.

This is part of the overall effort to see how many fish return to the river following the recent removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams. The Elwha was removed completely by March 2013 and the Glines Canyon is expected to be fully removed by end of 2014.  (more…)

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Forage Fish Important to Salmon Diet

Point No Point Treaty Council biologists are counting forage fish eggs so they can get a better idea of what fish is available for salmon.
Point No Point Treaty Council biologists are counting forage fish eggs so they can get a better idea of what food is available for salmon.

Shannon Miller and John Hagan keep a close eye on the phases of the moon so they can determine the best time of the month to collect samples of pinhead-sized translucent forage fish eggs.

“We found that the moon phases may be a potential spawning cue,” Miller said. “There are more eggs around the new moon and full moon phases during the fall and winter months, so we schedule our surveys around that and the tides. That makes for an interesting work schedule.”

(more…)

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Kids Fly a Kite for Science

Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe youth collected data for the U.S. Geological Survey by flying a kite over the Elwha River this summer.

As part of a science-based summer camp focusing on the Elwha River restoration project, the kite was collecting data about the ever-changing Lake Aldwell delta. The red kite had a small digital camera attached to the fly line, set up to take pictures of the ground below every three seconds.

The USGS is collecting aerial photos to document the rapidly changing deltas of the Elwha River during removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, said KC Nattinger, a field science educator with NatureBridge, a Lake Crescent-based science education camp. (more…)

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