We don’t know if salmon actually enjoy the smell of Christmas cookies that wash into Puget Sound with sewage effluent, but they can probably sense the holiday smell, according to Rick Keil, associate professor of oceanography at the University of Washington.

Keil and his students have been taking samples of water from Puget Sound and measuring the levels of chemicals associated with specific tastes. Chemicals associated with thyme are found after Thanksgiving. Methyl-vanilla, an ingredient in waffle cones and kettle corn, is found only in summer. Natural vanilla and cinnamon peak at holidays such as Christmas, Valentines Day and so on.

Keil started this project as a way to help people see the connections between the human and natural environments. He has pretty much stayed out of controversy by avoiding discussions about pharmaceuticals that can be found in Puget Sound. Some researchers believe that drugs flushed into local waters after passing through the human body may cause physiological changes in fish, including effects on the immune and reproductive systems.

Keil says all of the cinnamic acid, associated with cinnamon, that gets into Puget Sound has passed through the body of a mammal. Since it’s not likely that dogs and bears are eating a lot of cinnamon, he assumes that almost all is coming from human sewage.

“Control” stations off Vancouver Island in Canada show almost none of these compounds.

Ethyl-vanilla, a petroleum-derived product that creates a stronger vanilla taste than even natural vanilla, is more abundant in Puget Sound than the substance it mimics.

How these spices are affecting fish and wildlife remains uncertain. Are salmon ignoring these smells? Are they using them to home in on their natal streams? Are they confused by the smell of the holidays, experiencing more difficulty in finding their way through Puget Sound?

“You are what you eat,” Keil says, “and so is Puget Sound. If you eat it, Puget Sound eats it.”

Keil has been reporting on these results and adding to them for a couple of years. Read the latest UW news release or look up a story he wrote for the summer edition of “Watershed Review” (PDF 1.5 mb).

The latest twist on this research is getting more people involved in testing the waters in various areas of Western Washington. The Sound Citizen program includes UW students and scientists as well as anyone willing to follow scientific procedures in their sampling. Sampling kits are available. If you are interested, go to the Sound Citizen Web site.

I heard a couple of radio reports on this subject yesterday. But if you have 22 minutes, I highly recommend a recorded lecture of Keil’s. You can link to the audio and download the related slide show (PDF 1.5 mb). The discussion is quite informative and allows this researcher with a human touch to display his sense of humor before a live audience.

I received an announcement this evening from the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission:

The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission convened in a special meeting via telephone conference call this afternoon and immediately went into executive session to discuss personnel issues. The Commission came back into public session and voted in favor of accepting a letter of resignation received today from Director Jeff Koenings, with an effective date of December 11, 2008.

Another vote was taken to appoint Phil Anderson as acting director.

The Commission also approved the following statement:

“The Fish and Wildlife Commission has accepted the resignation of Dr. Jeffrey P. Koenings from his position as Director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife effective December 11, 2008. The Commission is extremely grateful to Dr. Koenings for his service and contributions as Director of the Department for the past 10 years. The Commission has named Phil Anderson as interim director. Anderson has been the deputy director of the Department for the past 1-1/2 years. The Commission will begin a nationwide search for a permanent Director in 2009.”

For a couple of weeks, I have heard rumors that Koenings may be leaving. I never got to the bottom of them, but it sounds like there may be more to this than the commission is letting on. I’m not sure about the politics of commission members, but I realize that some anglers believed Koenings favored commercial fishermen when it came to salmon allocations.

Koenings was always helpful to me, but that says nothing about his troubles inside or outside the agency. Anyone who cares to comment may do so here or contact me offline.

The Associated Press carried this story:
(more…)

The Washington Department of Ecology is working on an instream flow rule to protect water levels in 13 streams in the northeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula.

Map of Quilcene Snow Watershed. (Click to enlarge.)

Folks in that area have been putting a tremendous amount of time, effort and money into restoring their local streams. I’m sure it’s discouraging — and not so good for the salmon — when water disappears from some of these streams during critical times of the year.

A story I wrote for today’s Kitsap Sun explains some of the restrictions under consideration for future water users. The proposed rule would not affect current owners of water rights. You can also see a list of streams proposed for the rule on the Web page for the story.

Streams on the Kitsap Peninsula, as well as much of the Puget Sound basin, were closed years ago to water withdrawals to protect existing stream flows. See Washington state map (PDF 220 kb). This issue has caused consternation among local water managers, because it increases the difficulty to get water rights for deep community wells but does nothing about individual exempt wells, which are usually shallower and more likely to affect stream flows.

In the Quilcene Snow Watershed, Ecology is planning to tackle the problem by limiting water rights for future individual wells in some areas and sometimes requiring that water be used only in-home use where that’s justified. Ecology also would free up residents to capture rain water for irrigation.

Water rights and water allocations have become a huge issue in managing population growth in Western Washington, following years of water battles in some areas of Eastern Washington. Some regular readers of Watching Our Water Ways are far more versed on this subject than I am, and I would welcome further comments.

In a dramatic shift in management policy, the Pacific Fishery Management Council has adopted a new fishing regime for groundfish, such as whiting, cod, rockfish, flounder and sole.

This new approach for the West Coast, called individual fishing quotas, is said to encourage cooperation instead of competition, because each entity involved in the fishing industry will be given a portion of the allowable catch. That way, fishing boats can go fishing when the fish are abundant. They won’t be encouraged to go out in bad weather before the overall quota is reached.

Fishers won’t be forced to dump their dead bycatch, which are fish taken incidentally to the harvest of targeted stocks. Instead, the dead fish will be tallied and counted against any quota for the nontarged species, which will ultimately increase the ability of fishery managers to measure the impacts on all stocks.

The action was taken Friday by the PFMC, which issued a press release today (PDF 156 kb) explaining the action.

You’ll find more about groundfish management on the council’s Web site.

Individual Fishing Quotas seem like they have been waiting a long time for action in this region, and they still won’t go into effect until 2011.

IFQs have been encouraged by diverse groups, including the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, which released a chapter in its 2004 report (PDF 1 mb) that recommended something like IFQs but with a new name: “dedicated access privileges” (see page 289).

The conservative Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) has been pushing for IFQs for since 1996. See “Community-Run Fisheries: Avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons” and the recent “Beyond IFQs in Marine Fisheries: A guide for federal policy makers.”

Some environmental groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, have embraced this market-based approach.

The most controversial aspect of the council’s decision on Friday was to allocate 20 percent of the Pacific whiting harvest to processors. The processors said they needed the quotas to protect local business and existing jobs from the prospect of fishermen shipping their catch out of the region.

Pete Leipzig, executive director of the Fishermen’s Marketing Association, has raised moral, legal and practical objections to giving quotas to processors. See Leipzig’s letter to the PFMC.

As he told Seattle Times reporter Hal Bernton, “The council moved in the right direction, but they are still making a terrible mistake.”

The advisory council for the Pacific Coast National Marine Sanctuary has voted unanimously to oppose the proposed expansion of the Navy’s Quinault Underwater Training Range. The plan is to increase the range from 48 square miles to 1,854, much of it within the sanctuary.

Council members said they were especially concerned about activities in the sensitive surf zone as well as plans for deploying landing craft at Kalaloch Beach, within Olympic National Park.

Similar concerns were expressed in a joint letter from the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups. See my story in Sunday’s Kitsap Sun.

To fully understand the concerns, it would be a good idea to read the letters from the advisory council (PDF 124 kb) and the NRDC et. al. (PDF 412 kb).

Official Navy information can be found at NavSea Keyport home page.

Balancing environmental concerns and military readiness is never easy. Every time I write a story in which environmental concerns are raised about Navy activities, it triggers a debate about which is more important, the Navy or the environment.

There are some people who believe the Navy would never cause undue harm to the ecosystem, while others are quick to point out that the Navy has created some of the most toxic sites in the nation.

It’s an interesting debate, but a couple of things are worth noting. First, the Navy has become more environmentally concerned as the years go by. As with general society, some previously common practices in the Navy are considered appalling today. (They don’t shoot whales, do they?)

Second, the Navy is fairly responsive to the civilian administration in power at the time — which means that the environment may be more or less protected, depending on who we have for president.

Also, for better or worse, Navy commands change constantly. Rear Adm. Len Hering, commander of Navy Region Northwest from 2002 to 2005, was widely recognized for his protective attitude toward the environment. I believe he is largely responsible for a dramatic decrease in the number of oil spills that have occurred in recent years.

The question in my mind is not whether the Navy is all good or all bad. And it’s not whether environmental groups lack respect for the military and its needs. The answer may be as simple as the need for everyone to respect and understand each other while trying to resolve competing goals.

Remember, we’re talking about training conditions. In cases of conflict or potential conflict, the environment is not really a consideration.

Bonneville Power Administration has removed the last of more than 100,000 capacitors containing PCBs throughout its distribution system, thus reducing the risk of spilling these toxic chemicals that never seem to go away.

Officials with the Environmental Protection Agency recognized the accomplishment, as stated in a press release.

“EPA congratulates BPA for its proactive and voluntary efforts to remove a significant source of PCBs from the Northwest’s largest transmission system,” said Elin Miller, administrator for EPA’s Region 10. “This action by BPA shows their commitment to protect human health and the environment by preventing future releases of toxic PCBs.”

BPA replaced more than 101,000 capacitors at 69 substations. The $102-million cost was spread over a 17-year period beginning in 1991.

Eliminating the chance of spilling PCBs also reduces the financial risk of a costly cleanup hanging over BPA since PCBs were outlawed in the 1970s.

We hear a lot about dangerous levels of PCBs residing in marine mammals, including killer whales, seals and sea lions. These chemicals are considering endocrine disruptors with effects on the immune and reproductive systems of all kinds of animals.

I’m not sure if anyone has identified the predominant sources of PCBs are in the marine environment, but we know it will take a long time to eliminate the problem.

UPDATE, OCT. 10: Eric Robinson of the Vancouver Columbian does a nice job covering this story.

When a strange-looking fish washed up on the shoreline property of Kim and Ela Esterberg of Bainbridge Island, they had no idea what kind of fish they were looking at or how truly rare it was.

“We live about a mile south of Faye Bainbridge State Park,” Kim said. “We went down to the beach last Sunday (Sept. 28) after the Harvest Fair, and there was this long fish, about four feet long, lying on the beach.

Lancetfish found on East Bainbridge shoreline // Photo courtesy of Kim and Ela Esterberg

“It had come up with the tide,” Kim continued. “I didn’t know what it was. I had never seen a fish like that before.”

Since then, several biologists have identified it as a longnose lancetfish, a deep sea fish known as a voracious predator and seen only rarely in Puget Sound. See the University of Washington fish catalog for basic information.

They are so rare in inland waters that many biologists have never seen them alive or dead in Puget Sound.

A 2002 paper by Alexei M. Orlov and Vasily A. Ul’chenko suggests that the fish come ashore during periods of sudden ocean changes.

In 1994, Greg Johnston, a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, related a story of a 21-year-old fisherman who caught one of these strange fish off Brown’s Point near Tacoma. The fisherman didn’t know what to do with it, so he took its picture and threw it back.

It was a fun story while it lasted, this idea of allowing a swarm of tiny fish to chew dead skin off your feet. Now, the Washington Department of Licensing has ruled that the practice is unsanitary and cannot be allowed under Washington regulations.

Earlier this year, a nail salon in Northern Virginia began offering customers a chance to have their feet nibbled by toothless carp — $35 for a 15-minute dip in a tank.

As USA Today reported: “State regulations make no provision for regulating fish pedicures. But the county health department — which does regulate pools — required the salon to switch from a shallow, tiled communal pool that served as many as eight people to individual tanks in which the water is changed for each customer.”

A couple of weeks ago, Peridot Nail Salon in Kent began to offer the service and quickly filled up its calendar with people who wanted to have fish nibble at their feet. The cost was set at $30 for 15 minutes or $50 for 30 minutes. The salon used individual tanks of water.

Brian Beckley of the Kent Reporter stuck his feet in the tank of fish as he covered the story. “The fish do not bite,” he wrote. “It is an odd sensation as they move from foot to foot and between the toes, ticklish, but easily tolerable and almost pleasant once you get used to it.”

Because the practice has now been outlawed in this state, the video of Beckley and another customer offering their feet to these seemingly hungry fish should become a classic.

So what are the concerns of state authorities? According to a press release from the Washington Department of Licensing:

State law requires all tools and implements used in a pedicure to be sanitized, disinfected, or disposed of after each service to protect salon customers from the possibility of disease and infections. Since the salon cannot directly sanitize the fish, these rules do not allow for fish pedicures in Washington.

“We are greatly concerned about the safety of salon customers who choose to put their feet in a tank of live fish to eat away dead skin,” said Liz Luce, Director of the Department of Licensing. “These fish are being used as tools, and we do not believe you can properly sanitize a live fish and guarantee it doesn’t spread diseases, germs, or other infections.”

Salon owner Tuyet “Tweety” Bui said she believed she was following the health rules, according to a story in today’s Kent Reporter. But after Bui received a letter from the Department of Licensing, she quit offering the service. The fish, which cost $3,000 to import, have been retired and will become someone’s pets.

UPDATE: Ray Frederick of Kitsap Poggie Club has informed me that Don Larson will talk to the Poggie Club about his hopes for a Bremerton underwater park as well as a bicycle trail from Bremerton to Gorst during the club’s Sept. 10 meeting. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at Sheridan Community Center, 680 Lebo Blvd., in Bremerton, and everyone is invited.

————————————

Hundreds of old tires were removed last week from Saltwater State Park near Des Moines, where they were dumped years ago in hopes of forming an artificial reef for fish.

The Associated Press wrote about the project in a short piece carried by many newspapers, including the Kitsap Sun. But the original press release from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife tells a more complete story.

Greg Bargmann of WDFW estimated that more than 500 tires were sitting in 50 to 60 feet of water over 55 acres offshore of the park.

The tires were placed there in the 1970s, when it was common to use tires as artificial reefs. Tires are now believed to break down in salt water and are considered an environmental hazard.

Don Larson, a Bremerton scuba diver who knows Saltwater State Park, says the tires never really worked as fish habitat. While fish generally congregate around rocks, concrete, wood pilings and even shipwrecks, the tires remained barren, he said.

In the late 1990s, a group led by Bruce Higgins, who helped develop Edmonds Underwater Park, tried to create a rocky reef off Saltwater State Park, according to Larson. The late state Sen. Bob Oke of Port Orchard pushed through an appropriation of $250,000 for the project, Larson said, and state officials approved a plan to create a reef of large rocks.

Larson recalls that the National Marine Fisheries Service put the brakes on the reef project out of fear that lingcod and other large fish that would occupy the reef would eat juvenile chinook salmon, which had become listed as threatened species.

Another question regarding the placement of artificial reefs in Puget Sound is whether they actually increase fish populations or simply create an attraction for fish already in the area. If it is the latter, then reefs can encourage predation from other fish and human fishers. See Journal of Fish Biology.

I believe the current thinking is new artificial reefs should include some kind of marine conservation area, or no-fishing zone to protect these long-lived fish. These larger, older fish can become a brood stock for smaller fish to spread out and repopulate a larger area.

Larson has been a longtime advocate of sinking part of a ship or a pile of rocks in a protected area off the Bremerton waterfront, probably north of the Turner Joy. It could become a major attraction for scuba divers and boost the recovery of Puget Sound bottom fish, which have been largely wiped out by over-fishing.

Larson points to the Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia, which has sank about half a dozen destroyer escorts, which have become popular dive spots. The key, he said, is to seal off enclosed passageways and to cut holes in the hulls and superstructure to allow divers to swim into areas where they can see the way back out ahead of them.

Sinclair Inlet isn’t deep enough to sink a full ship without creating a navigation hazard, Larson said, but there are other locations in Puget Sound and Hood Canal that might be suitable.

If you haven’t heard, our blog server crashed on Monday and was on and off all day Tuesday. Hopefully, it’s back to normal, but the situation has thrown me off my game.

I’m taking the next two days off, so I may not post much, if anything, more until Monday. But feel free to comment on any of the items below or any other postings. There shouldn’t be much, if any, delay for your comments to appear.

So let’s catch up on a few local water-related stories in the news:

Haven Lake weed treatment: Lake resident Monica Harle turned up the heat on plans to treat the lake a second time when her attorney sent letters to area property owners. She has taken the legal position that the homeowners association, which ordered the treatment, cannot speak for all the property owners. As a result, killing the weeds could violate the property rights of those who don’t want the treatment. Read more in today’s story.

Seabeck Marina: Washington Department of Ecology has not squashed this project. In fact, agency officials seem to be saying that they’re looking for a way to approve it. Meanwhile, the Suquamish Tribe has indicated that it won’t stand in the way. Read Brynn Grimley’s story.

Shellfish settlement: Some commercial shellfish growers are wondering if the tribes will reject their claims for an exemption from 50-50 sharing. In comments on the story, some people are reacting by attacking the tribes. Please don’t overlook the most significant point: Attorneys for the growers helped negotiate a $33 million deal with the tribes that required certain documents as proof of commercial ownership. Since all the parties approved the deal, the tribes cannot be blamed if these documents are difficult to come by. It’s actually a pretty complicated issue, and I’ve tried to explain the basics in a story.

Chico Creek: The long-awaited Chico Creek restoration at Kitsap Golf and Country Club is under way, as I mentioned in a story Tuesday. It is unfortunate that the project had to be broken into two parts — three if you count the culvert replacement — but this should be a great improvement for salmon migration. By the way, planners are trying to decide where to install a salmon-viewing platform that I’m sure would get a lot of use.