Job SummaryResponsibilities involve project management related to shellfish fisheries resource co-management and research. The employee has the primary responsibility for the design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and develops…
The Suquamish Tribe has constructed a new seafood plant to increase the variety of products offered to consumers.
“With the new plant, we have the ability to deliver fresh clams, crab and salmon to our commercial customers,” said Suquamish Seafoods general manager Tony Forsman. “We also plan to develop our product lines further, making them available directly to the consumer.”
The new 16,000-square-foot building includes a flash freezer with a holding capacity up to 28,000 lbs. of Dungeness crab. (more…)
Whatcom County’s booming dairy and agricultural industry has cost Lummi Nation shellfish harvesters millions of dollars already, and a recent closure of shellfish beds in Portage Bay is adding to the tally.
Manure from dairy cows is discharged either directly or indirectly into the Nooksack River, which flows into Portage Bay. In September, the tribe closed 335 acres of Portage Bay shellfish beds to harvest because of high fecal coliform levels that exceeded National Shellfish Sanitation Program standards. Continued poor water quality led to the closure of two additional areas in December, bringing the total to nearly 500 acres of shellfish beds that are unsafe to harvest. More areas may have to be closed in the coming months if conditions are not improved. (more…)
Researchers from Oregon State University (OSU) are studying shellfish contamination on the Swinomish reservation and nearby Fidalgo Bay.
Both the Swinomish Tribe and Samish Nation have partnered in the project with OSU’s Superfund Research Program, focusing on clam contamination on tribal lands.
Butter clams were sampled from sites in Fidalgo Bay near an oil refinery, and from the relatively pristine Kukutali Preserve. Kukutali is co-managed by the Swinomish Tribe and the state of Washington.
“We predominantly are looking for chemicals that come from fossil fuels,” said Blair Paulik, OSU Ph.D. candidate. “We were interested in seeing sites that were the extremes within the area. We expect if there’s going to be an area that’s more contaminated it will be near the refinery. We expect Kukutali to be less contaminated.”
The samples are being analyzed in Professor Kim Anderson’s lab at OSU’s department of environmental and molecular toxicology. (more…)
High levels of fecal coliform prompted the Lummi Nation to close 335 acres of Portage Bay shellfish beds in September.
The fecal coliform – mostly from livestock, human and pet waste originating upstream from the reservation – exceeds federal bacterial standards, meaning the shellfish could be unsafe to eat. The voluntary closure affects Lummi’s treaty-protected ceremonial, subsistence and commercial harvest.
“The reservation tidelands are deeply affected by activities along the Nooksack River, which flows into Portage Bay,” said Lummi harvest manager Ben Starkhouse.
Lummi shellfish harvesters lost an estimated $8 million in revenue from 1996 to 2006, when 180 acres of shellfish beds were closed for the same reason.
During that closure, more than $8 million was provided to the region’s dairy industry to stop the discharge of manure into the Nooksack River. But after the shellfish beds were reopened, federal and state assistance with inspections and monitoring was substantially reduced. (more…)
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe is re-using old cinderblocks to clean up popular shellfish beds and delineate harvest areas.
With crews from the Department of Ecology’s Washington Conservation Corps/Veterans Conservation Corps (WCC/VCC) and NW Straits Commission, tribal shellfish staff spent a week in July situating the concrete blocks and removing debris from Quilcene and Sequim bays.
In Quilcene Bay, hundreds of cinderblocks were left behind on the tidelands from an old oyster farm operation. Instead of hauling them out, the tribe reorganized them to create obvious harvest area boundaries. (more…)
The Skokomish Tribe has strategically placed nearly 100 cinderblocks on the Skokomish tidelands with hopes of attracting an invasive shellfish, the ornate Japanse oyster drill.
“Oyster drills are known to seek out hard vertical structures to gather and lay their egg cases, so by experimentally baiting them with cinder blocks, we’re hoping to lessen their impacts on our oyster seed,” said Chris Eardley, the tribe’s Shellfish Biologist. “We’re going to try and use the biology of these creatures against them.”
The snails release a pheromone to attract others, so Eardley hopes his 72 cinder blocks across eight acres of tidelands will be covered with snails and eggs soon, which will be collected by the staff and removed from the tidelands. The tribe is employing a few methods of drill control and will do an end-of-season survey in late summer to see if the population decreased. (more…)
The never-realized plans to build a nuclear power plant on Kiket Island has a legacy that’s proven useful to the Swinomish Tribe.
The 1969 power plant proposal attracted researchers to study the island’s ecology. Among these was then-graduate student Jon Houghton, who established permanent transects around Kiket Island to study intertidal ecology and measure, among other things, clam density and biomass. In 2011, Swinomish shellfish biologist Julie Barber worked with the tribe’s water resources program to survey the same transects as Houghton to quantify ecological change over the past four decades.
In the decades since the power plant plans were scrapped, Kiket Island was privately owned. For at least the past two decades, tribal members were discouraged by upland owners from harvesting on the tribally owned tidelands. This long-term lack of harvest pressure now provides Swinomish with the unusual opportunity to study unharvested clam populations.
The Kitsap Sun reported on the recent in-person meeting between U.S.'s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Chinese officials about China's ban of geoduck imported from the United States'…
The Skokomish Tribe is upgrading its water quality lab to a state-of-the-art facility. The tribe recently purchased high-end water quality lab equipment from the Shoalwater Bay Tribe to conduct more…