If water temperature isn’t cool enough during their life span, the stability of an entire population can be impacted, said Leah Mellinger, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s finfish program manager.

To better understand this, the tribe is testing the water temperature tolerance of juvenile chum salmon. 

“The tribes and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife are developing a comprehensive chum salmon management plan and one of the big missing chunks is how freshwater degradation impacts smolt productivity and pre-spawn mortality,” Mellinger said.

Climate change also is a motivator for starting the study.

“With changing hydrology and climate, rivers are expected to get warmer,” she said. “It is necessary to understand salmon temperature tolerance to be able forecast run sizes and manage populations.”

The tribe developed a thermal study to test around 2,000 chum from about 20 populations in western Washington.

Within each population, 100 juvenile chum are pulled from a hatchery before their scheduled release or beach seined from a nearby creek during outmigration, to assess both natural and hatchery fish. The fish are dispersed into 32-ounce mason jars placed in 12-gallon tubs filled with local creek or hatchery water. 

A heating element slowly increases the water temperature and a pump circulates the water so the temperature increases at a steady rate. Dissolved oxygen is pumped into each jar so that temperature is the only stressor on the fish during the test. 

Staff check the temperature every 10 minutes and observe the fish. When a fish flips, indicating it would not recover in the wild, the temperature is noted and the fish is pulled from the jar and placed in a recovery bucket before being released back into the hatchery or stream.

“We just make them a little unhappy for a few minutes and in return, get important information,” Mellinger said. “While there are many factors that play into fish survival, this kind of information is so necessary that you really can’t do anything else without the baseline.” 

The fish start the experiment at their local water temperature to minimize stress. Some populations seem to handle more heat than others, Mellinger said, as some flipped at 25° C (77° F) while others tolerated as warm as 28° C (82.4° F).

“If we know the rivers are getting to a certain temperature, we could expect that the production of those fish, either on the escapement side or on the smolt side, is probably going to be a lot lower, and that can feed into forecasting for chum four years ahead,” she said.

Following the juvenile study, the tribe will conduct a similar study on a smaller group of adult chum to see if results correlate. 

“If so, then we can extrapolate that out to endangered populations instead of assessing every adult population and potentially adversely impacting ESA-listed stocks,” Mellinger said. 

Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe finfish program manager Leah Mellinger tests the water temperature in jars containing juvenile chum salmon for the tribe’s water temperature study. Story and photos: Tiffany Royal

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Muckleshoot Indian Tribe staff and fishers caught 85 northern pike during a four-week fishery in May and June during an ongoing project to net the big lake to reduce populations of non-native predatory fish. 

While the tribe and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) staff have sporadically encountered the ravenous predator since a first detection in 2017, the number found this year marks a worrisome increase. Last year, they saw only three. 

 A booming northern pike population will mean fewer salmon in the lake—and fewer chances to catch salmon, kokanee, trout and other fish for tribal and non-tribal fishers alike, said Jason Schaffler, the fisheries division director for the tribe.

“We don’t want them here. They’ll limit everyone’s opportunities in the future,” he said. 

The pike were likely illegally transported and released into the lake. Pike are classified as a prohibited aquatic invasive species (AIS) under Washington state law.

Northern pike are large, growing up to 45 pounds, with spiky teeth. They are voracious eaters, mostly focused on soft-bodied fish but also willing to eat frogs and ducklings. They can reproduce quickly and severely damage ecosystems, and pose a particularly dire threat to juvenile sockeye salmon, which feed and grow in Lake Washington for up to two years before swimming into the ocean.

“They’ll eat anything they can fit in their mouths,” said Tiffany Armstrong, a biologist with the tribe. “They sit and wait for something to go by. If it’ll fit in their mouth, they’ll go after it. They eat a pretty hefty amount of salmon.”. 

The tribe is exploring next steps including practicing invasive vegetation control — which would remove vegetation that serves as pike’s hunting grounds and nursing habitat — in an effort to limit the invasive fish’s reproductive output, and will delve into one question: Is the current northern pike population reproducing in the lake? If so, it may prove more difficult to control.

Coordinated response with tribe and state co-managers and expanded federal, tribal, state, and local funding partnerships will be essential to contain impacts and prevent long-term ecological and economic consequences.

In recent years WDFW also operated a state-funded project to suppress populations of non-native predatory fish that feed on salmon in Lake Washington. Despite requests from WDFW, co-manager tribes, and fishing and conservation organizations, this $1.4 million budget proviso was not funded by the State Legislature in the 2025-2027 biennium.

For now, tribal staff hope fishers know that northern pike are illegal to transplant in the lake, and should be killed immediately if caught. Pike may not be transported while alive anywhere in Washington.

If possible, fishers should also take a photo and report the northern pike by phone (1-888.WDFW-AIS) or email (ais@dfw.wa.gov) to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) or through the online form at: invasivespecies.wa.gov/report-a-sighting.

Top: Northern pike caught in Lake Washington by the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe on May 6. Photos provided by the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe.

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In 2017, the U.S. Navy was building a pier on the Coast Guard base in the bay to accommodate large vessels that escort naval submarines through the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

“It was a pretty large pier and was going to have some environmental impact,” said Matt Beirne, the tribe’s natural resources director. 

Mitigation projects were developed, including salvaging marine plants from the pier construction site. Eelgrass meadows, designated as critical habitat in the state of Washington, buffer the effects of ocean acidification, stabilize the nearshore, and are used by salmon, other fish, invertebrate species, marine mammals and birds for foraging, spawning and rearing.

Divers from the tribe and PNNL harvested about 7,500 plants from the site in 2017, including eelgrass. Half were planted on another shoreline in the bay, and the other half were placed in outdoor tanks at PNNL’s facility to grow before being planted.

To everyone’s surprise, the number of eelgrass plants at PNNL doubled the first year. By 2019, the number had tripled, Beirne said. 

Since then, the tribe, PNNL and volunteers have planted 6,000-9,000 eelgrass plants in the bay every two years. This spring was the final effort in which 17,205 individual eelgrass shoots were planted, bringing the project to 43,205 plants moved. 

“The fact that we would harvest half the tank for our periodic plantings and two years later have the same number or more meant we could provide much more benefit that we initially thought,” said John Vavrinec, a senior research scientist at PNNL.

“It has been a truly exciting and rewarding project for our staff and a great collaboration with PNNL,” Beirne said. 

The plantings also have benefited from the tribe’s numerous shoreline restoration projects in the bay, he said. 

Over the years, the tribe has removed structures from the Ediz Hook shoreline, such as creosote, concrete and riprap, then restored the beaches with a gravel and sand mix. Some projects involved the use of sand that had accumulated on the Elwha River following dam removal. 

“It has created this great positive synergy with the subtidal recolonization of eelgrass,” Beirne said. “A lot of that sand has been transported from the beach down into the shallow subtidal areas by long-shore drift processes, and that’s created this really nice habitat for natural recolonization.”

Eelgrass shoots are tied with jute twine onto rebar, which is then placed in the subtidal areas of Port Angeles Harbor so the eelgrass can create habitat for juvenile salmon and other marine life. Story and photos by Tiffany Royal

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Tribal members started the day on the Tacoma waterfront by honoring the first salmon of the season, then gathered in Fife to mark the opening of the tribe’s new longhouse, the first on their lands since the last one burned down more than 170 years ago.

The new longhouse includes about 17,300 square feet of indoor space, including a great room with amphitheater seating plus a dining room and kitchen. The tribe put it to use immediately with a first foods ceremony held during the longhouse opening.

“For me, it represents the spiritual foundation by which our community can begin to heal,” said Puyallup Tribal Councilwoman Annette Bryan. “We’re bringing back our songs, our dances, our ceremonies. To have this structure where we can do these ceremonies next to the river on our homelands of our ancestors is special.”

The opening included a ceremony naming the longhouse x̌ʷiqʷadiʔalʔtxʷ, or Thunderbird House.

“Our home is coming home,” said Connie McCloud, a tribal elder and heritage division manager. “This will be a place of healing, of gathering, of feeding each other.”

The longhouse will connect tribal members to their heritage, their ancestors and the treaty rights that so many fought for, Bryan said.

“This space will help us exercise our treaty rights,” she said.

Bryan said she is grateful to all the people and organizations that helped make the longhouse a reality, including the tribal council, Puyallup Tribal Enterprises, the tribe’s heritage division, and Tahoma Construction.

The longhouse ceremony was preceded by the First Fish Ceremony, where tribal fishers catch the first fish of the season, then return it ceremonially to the water.

“I feel blessed in my heart to be able to do what we do,” said tribal councilman Fred Dillon. “We’ve been doing this since time immemorial.”

Puyallup Tribe of Indians Vice Chair Sylvia Miller holds the ribbon steady while tribal elder Connie McCloud, also heritage division manager for the tribe, wields golden scissors during the grand opening of the tribe’s new longhouse, which coincided with the annual First Fish Ceremony. Photos and story: Trevor Pyle

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North Sound tribal members joined groups of Bellingham fourth graders this spring as they visited a local beach to study salmon in the wild through the Whatcom Marine Resources Committee’s Beach Seines with Schools program.

Before students practiced identifying juvenile salmon by species during a program field trip in May, Jim and Sandra Bura shared stories about the natural and cultural histories of the fish.

“Remember when you see the fish here, they came from the Nooksack River,” said Sandra Bura, of Lummi Nation, at Boulevard Park on Bellingham Bay. “And someday they’ll come back, a long way, to the river again.”

Her husband Jim Bura, Nooksack Indian Tribe member and fisheries harvest manager, shared that while small salmon are migrating outward into Bellingham Bay in the spring, some large salmon are migrating back inward, through the bay to the river.

“We’ve had fishermen these past few weeks harvesting these fish for our community,” he said. “We catch them, smoke them, can them. These fish, our people have survived on forever.”

Sandra Bura reminded students of the five species of salmon. She described how the color of their bodies, shapes of their tails and patterns like dark spots on their sides can help distinguish one type of salmon from the other.

Lummi stock assessment staff then used a seine net to gather a sampling of juvenile salmon and other marine life from along the beach. Students observed coho and chum salmon, as well as an abundance of shiner perch, a few shore crabs and a sculpin.

The students practiced taking field notes, including the species and size of each fish and the occasional drawing of their observations.

Beach Seines with Schools is a program of the Whatcom Marine Resources Committee in partnership with the Lummi and Nooksack tribes, Northwest Straits Foundation and Salish Sea School. A series of field trips takes place in April and May with participating schools and tribal guest speakers from throughout Whatcom County.

Above: Fourth graders gather around while a juvenile salmon is placed in an observation aquarium so they can measure the fish, identify the species and draw their observations during a Beach Seines with Schools field trip. Photos and story by Kimberly Cauvel

Seining program connects students with salmon, tribes

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“Our goal is specifically to re-evaluate the peak molting period of Dungeness crab in management region in eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca,” said Devynn Gately, the tribe’s crustacean biologist. The management region includes Sequim Bay, Discovery Bay and near Port Angeles.

Understanding the timing of the molting period is vital for protecting the resource, Gately said. 

During molting, crab shed their hard shell, becoming extremely soft and vulnerable to predators and handling mortality. In addition, female Dungeness crab mate right after molting, so closing the fishery during peak molting ensures a sustainable population.

“We’re trying to avoid harvesting during this time frame to protect the resource and benefit our fishers,” Gately said. 

The tribal fishery typically is closed April 1-June 21, but tribal fishers have advised scientists that soft-shelled crab are still being found after the closure period, during the harvest season.

“So what does this mean?” Gately said. “Is it a change in the season of the molting period due to shifts in environmental conditions? Is it location based, dependent on habitat? Is it time to reconsider the timing of the harvest window and closure period?”

Prior to the study, Gately held a workshop with Jamestown’s crab fishers to get an idea of where to sample and other logistics they come across when harvesting. 

“Getting that input from the fishermen helped tremendously,” she said. 

Since last November, the tribe has been sampling crab once a month by placing 36 pots throughout 12 sites. They note each crab’s sex, carapace width and shell condition before returning it to the water.

Sensors attached to a crab pot at each site record water temperature and dissolved oxygen data, tracking whether those environmental factors could be associated with shell condition.

This work is supported through Washington Sea Grant’s Pacific Northwest Crab Research Group, a collective of tribal and state co-managers and other researchers.

“The idea is to streamline everything,” Gately said. “If we’re all doing crab survey work and collecting similar data, then we can share the data and have it be applicable across crab management regions.”

A Dungeness crab being documented by size and sex for a study about peak molting periods in Puget Sound. Story and photos by Tiffany Royal

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“These efforts are making a difference,” said Jason Griffith, environmental program manager for the Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians.

Through two major project phases, the tribe has restored about 320 acres of delta at the zis a ba project site, which adjoins with another about 150 acres restored by The Nature Conservancy.

The recently completed phase 2 of the project incorporated a network of distributaries and smaller tidal channels. These pathways enable freshwater from the Stillaguamish River to disperse more broadly across Port Susan Bay, making portions of the bay cooler and less saline. The channels also give fish navigating through the estuary more pathways to follow.

The tribe is gathering insights about the function of the renewed habitat while planning another major phase of restoration.

Each phase involves setting back dikes or levees to invite water onto a landscape previously converted for agriculture. Reopening the delta to the tides restores critical habitat for the depressed run of Stillaguamish River chinook and other salmon populations.

“This restoration work is designed to provide future generations with access to healthier and more abundant salmon populations,” said Kadi Bizyayeva, vice chair of the Stillaguamish tribal council and fisheries director for the tribe.

Success so far has been evident, with salmon found in freshly inundated marsh and newly carved channels soon after work was complete. Chinook, coho, pink and chum salmon have since been recorded during monitoring, along with trout, common nearshore fish species, and invertebrates important in the marine food chain.

Monitoring occurs biweekly February through July. The goals include better understanding what the capacity is for fish where habitat is restored and learning which populations of salmon are benefiting from the new acreage.

Despite pouring rain one day in May, a team of fish biologists and research scientists navigated a boat into the evolving estuary to conduct this monitoring.

The Skagit River System Cooperative (SRSC), a natural resources management agency that supports the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribes, leads the monitoring in coordination with the Stillaguamish Tribe.

“We can make predictions about how many fish this could benefit, but we have to get our feet wet to be sure,” said Correigh Greene, senior research scientist at SRSC.

The team moves from channel to channel, hopping onto muddy shorelines, casting a seine and gathering data at each of 14 monitoring sites. Along the way, they note the species and size of each salmon they find. They also scan them for hatchery tags.

If no tag is detected, the team collects a fin clipping for genetic analysis to help determine population origins. When a hatchery tag is detected, the team sometimes keeps the head of the fish to retrieve the tag and determine which hatchery program the fish came from.

Salmon have been intercepted from the Skagit, Snohomish and Stillaguamish river systems, showing the regional value of estuary habitat—an important nursery where juvenile salmon can grow and improve their odds of survival before they swim out to sea—to overall Puget Sound salmon populations.

Above: The monitoring team pulls a seine on shore at one of 14 monitoring locations around the zis a ba project site. Photos and story by Kimberly Cauvel

Restoration effort is decolonizing the Stillaguamish delta

Stillaguamish estuary restoration gives juvenile salmon more places to rear

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Salmon travel great distances after they migrate from their natal rivers. They are harvested by commercial, recreational and tribal fisheries along the way.

Treaty tribes have harvested these salmon since time immemorial in the open ocean as well as terminal areas. We coordinate these fisheries with two countries, several states and First Nations in Canada.

Salmon are more than just numbers to the treaty tribes. They are more than a commodity to be caught and sold and eaten. They are relatives and they need to be cared for.

As our salmon runs continue to decline due to habitat degradation and climate change, we know their recovery can’t be reduced to a single quick fix.

We understand how people might wrongly assume that restricting harvest could boost their numbers. Without understanding how ocean fisheries are managed, people might see that as a place to start.

We can’t look at natural resources in isolation. We need to look at how everything is connected.

Science has shown us repeatedly that no amount of harvest reduction can increase salmon production until we improve spawning habitat. The opposite is true—if too many salmon return to insufficient habitat, competition among the increased number of fish could reduce the overall production of eggs.

Another misunderstanding is that to be sustainable, salmon fisheries must occur in certain areas with particular types of gear. We manage fisheries based on total mortalities across all areas and with all types of gear. Quotas are determined by international treaties and federal law as well as state-to-state and state-to-tribe negotiations.

Reducing ocean fisheries is not a conservation move, it simply reallocates the harvest to fisheries closer to shore. At the end of the day, it doesn’t let more salmon come home.

But for some reason, ocean fisheries are being demonized and classified as “industrial-scale,” without defining what that means. Commercial ocean fisheries are efficient, and the harvest of salmon in marine waters includes all preterminal recreational fishers, trollers, purse seiners and ocean gillnetters.

On the federal level, ocean fisheries are governed by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. This law requires managers to use the best available science to set catch limits to prevent overharvest, rebuild depleted stocks, and consider the needs of both nontribal and tribal fishing communities.

Treaties are “the supreme law of the land” according to the U.S. Constitution, so federal fisheries management must be consistent with treaty rights. Fisheries managers must ensure that treaty tribes can harvest their reserved share of salmon before setting nontribal fishing quotas.

Salmon fisheries are also managed by the Pacific Salmon Treaty between the United States and Canada through the Pacific Salmon Commission. Tribal treaty rights are recognized and embedded within that governance structure.

The state of Washington and the Pacific Fishery Management Council have processes where concerned citizens can offer comment on fishing seasons, but tribal treaty rights are not up for debate.

Unfortunately, we are seeing international special interest groups lobby both countries, attempting to influence a treaty between the United States and Canada. Whose interests do they represent? Battling for allocation to benefit only one sector distracts from meaningful work to recover and sustainably manage salmon.

We’ve heard one campaign wrongly claim that ocean fishing runs contrary to Indigenous practices of river-based fishing and stewardship. To be clear, Indigenous practices have always included ocean fishing. Ocean fishing is not the problem.

Managing salmon harvest gets harder every year as human populations increase, climate patterns change and marine mammal predation grows. It’s misleading and inappropriate to blame one fishing sector for the problem.

Fisheries managers face the challenge of limiting total mortality to sustainable levels based on current salmon productivity, so that enough fish reach spawning grounds. Getting fish to the rivers isn’t enough. Salmon also need greater protection from marine mammal predation and ample habitat for successful spawning.

Fisheries management isn’t improved with catchphrases about bringing salmon home. These are slogans masquerading as conservation. Tribal nations have been sustainably managing salmon harvest for generations and we will continue to do so.

Above: Tribal fisheries staff weigh a salmon harvested in an ocean fishery sustainably managed through international treaties, state-to-state, state-to-tribal and tribal-tribal negotiations. Photo: North Forty Productions.

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In the spring, a fish passage facility on Baker Lake is busy as thousands of juvenile salmon, mostly sockeye, swim into a floating surface collector. After capture, the fish are carefully counted and prepared for transport downstream to the Skagit River.

This fish passage program combined with on-site hatchery production at Puget Sound Energy’s two-dam hydroelectric system on the Baker River has become a shining example for salmon recovery efforts where dams are involved.

The program was developed by Puget Sound Energy (PSE) in coordination with the treaty tribes of the Skagit watershed who co-manage the region’s fisheries. Since its operation, the sockeye population has seen renewed growth, nearing recovery goals in recent years.

“Now we are all the beneficiaries of our collective efforts,” said Fred Cayou, senator of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. “I am so glad to see the record-setting Baker sockeye salmon returns that allow our tribal fishers to exercise their treaty rights, practice our cultural lifeways and feed our tribal community.”

The successful PSE program may serve as a model for other utilities developing fish passage, such as Seattle City Light’s three-dam hydroelectric project on the Skagit River. In pursuit of a renewed license for its dams, Seattle recently agreed to implement fish passage, though the design is yet to be determined.

NWIFC Chairman Ed Johnstone toured PSE’s floating surface collector and nearby hatchery facilities in May. After observing a mix of hatchery and wild fish moving from the lake through the collector and other hatchery fish swimming in the protection of raceways, he noted a dichotomy in the success.

“This is impressive, but unfortunate that it has to be here to begin with,” Johnstone said. “Water is life.”

The dams on the Baker and Skagit rivers block the free flow of water—and fish populations that navigate those flows—so that its force can be converted into electricity.

Above: NWIFC Chairman Ed Johnstone, right, and Swinomish senator Fred Cayou, left, toured a fish passage facility at Baker Lake during the downstream migration of juvenile sockeye salmon in May, observing incoming fish being counted and separated by species. Photos and story by Kimberly Cauvel

Positive trend continues for sockeye program

‘Great success’: Baker River sockeye reach record number

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The tribe and environmental nonprofit teamed up three years ago to revive Olympia oysters, which have long been prized by the tribe and others but have been imperiled by pollution, over-harvesting and other threats.

“We’ve had success and want to build on that,” said Eric Sparkman, the tribe’s shellfish manager.

Olympia oysters are the only oyster species native to the West Coast. Relatively small in size, they are valued both as food and as a part of the ecosystems they live in—filtering water and creating beds that serve as habitat for other species, including salmon. 

Over the years, a number of threats have diminished the oysters’ population, including effluent and predators such as the Japanese oyster drill, an invasive sea snail that eats Olympia oysters along with other prey.

The partnership aims to bolster the oyster population on Squaxin Island, which is spiritually sacred to the Squaxin Island Tribe as a place of healing. Previously the location of the tribe’s reservation after the signing of the Treaty of Medicine Creek in 1854, the island is now used exclusively by tribal members for fishing, hunting and shellfish gathering. Tribal members also harvest plants on the island and hold cultural ceremonies there.

With support from The Nature Conservancy, tribal staff laid down cultch—a substrate of oyster shells—and oyster seed that will settle and grow on the cultch.

“I’d say what we see is we’ve got a lot of oysters on shell,” Sparkman said. “There’s mortality, but there’s a good amount of oysters there. To have a large number of oysters in that vicinity is the goal—to have a spawning, dense, population of oysters.”

The tribe is exploring three more sites to potentially repeat the effort, aided by a grant through Natural Resources Conservation Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Puget Sound Restoration Fund (PSRF) provided the seed for the project with TNC. In addition, since 2015, the tribe and PSRF have been monitoring Olympia oyster recruitment by placing sticks laced with oyster shells to catch oyster spat. The tribe later pulls them to send to PSRF, which provides the tribe with data on how the posts have worked to recruit young oysters. —Trevor Pyle

Squaxin Island shellfish manager Eric Sparkman (right) and The Nature Conservancy Marine Conservation manager Molly Bogeberg examine oysters in the spring as part of the tribe and nonprofit’s ongoing partnership to improve the population of Olympia oysters. 

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