Using federal economic stimulus money, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has allocated $4.5 million to the removal of derelict fishing gear in Puget Sound.

This project and several other stream and estuary restoration projects in Puget Sound are part of an allocation of $167 million nationwide for marine and coastal habitats. See NOAA’s news release for a description of all 50 projects approved under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Kitsap County did not receive money for a new bridge at the Carpenter Creek estuary nor for the next phase of the Chico Creek restoration at Kitsap Golf and Country Club. These were the submissions that came out of this county. Officials held high hopes for approval, since the projects were endorsed by the Puget Sound Partnership and the Governor’s Office — but so were a lot of other projects.

As it turns out, Washington state will be provided 10 percent of the total nationwide funding, which leaves little room for complaint.

“The stimulus funds announced today by NOAA are a great win for Washington’s salmon recovery and Puget Sound restoration efforts,” Gov. Chris Gregoire stated in a news release.

Disappointed Kitsap County officials are regrouping to find another way and other funding to move the two restoration projects forward. See my story slated for tomorrow’s Kitsap Sun.

Carpenter Creek has been on one or more priority lists for years, but the project never seems to get done. In any given year, either the federal dollars aren’t available or the state match can’t be found, or both. I can only remind supporters that a new culvert for Barker Creek in Central Kitsap went through some of the same gyrations before getting built a year ago.

Puget Sound projects that did get funding appear to be quite deserving, according to observers who know the details. Those projects are:

• Elwha River Floodplain Restoration, Port Angeles, $2 million. In conjunction with the Elwha Dam removal, this project will restore 82 acres of the floodplain of the lower Elwha River through the removal of dikes and culverts, revegetation and invasive species control.
• Removal of Derelict Fishing Gear in Puget Sound, $4.5 million. This program will remove more than 200 metric tons of marine debris, including more than 3,000 nets. It includes the restoration of 600 acres of habitat.
• Smuggler’s Slough, Nooksack River Restoration, Bellingham, $1.7 million. The project will raise a roadway, reconnect tidal connections and restore eelgrass habitat over 493 acres of Smuggler’s Slough in Lummi Bay. Seven miles of slough habitat also will be opened.
• Qwuloolt Estuary Restoration, Marysville, $2 million. This effort will restore 350 acres of wetland and 16 stream miles to allow the passage of several species of salmon on the lower Snohomish River and its surrounding tidal floodplain. Included are the removal of levees, new channel excavation and planting of vegetation.
• Fisher Slough Marsh Restoration, Burlington, $5.2 million. The project will restore 60 acres of the Skagit River floodplain by replacing antiquated agricultural floodgates and restoring 15 miles of high-quality habitat for chum, coho, chinook and other species.
• Hansen Creek Floodplain Restoration, Milltown, $988,000. Included in this project are an excavation to reconnect 140 acres of forested floodplain habitat with the addition of woody debris for chum, coho, chinook and other species.

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Gov. Chris Gregoire has appointed three new members of the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission. They are:

David Jennings of Olympia, who has been active in fish and wildlife issues for nearly 20 years, according to the Governor’s Office;
Rollie Schmitten of Lake Chelan, former director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and former director of the National Marine Fisheries Service; and
Brad Smith, dean of Huxley College of Environmental Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

The three will serve terms that end in December 2014. The commission oversees the Department of Fish and Wildlife, which manages natural resources and regulates hunting and fishing seasons.

Schmitten replaces Jerry Gutzwiler, a Wenatchee orchardist; Smith replaces Will Roehl, a Bellingham attorney; and Jennings replaces Shirley Solomon of Mount Vernon, chairwoman of the Skagit Watershed Council.

More information about the three as well as background on the ongoing commission members:
(more…)

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Among all the gloomy stories about declining salmon runs, I am pleased to tell the positive story about the restoration of Hood Canal summer chum. See Sunday’s story in the Kitsap Sun.

For this population of salmon, biologists and political leaders have followed through on a carefully crafted recovery program. Since the late 1980s, researchers have studied these fish to an unusual degree — from the genetic makeup of the summer chum to their migratory patterns. As a result, they have been able to judge when things were going well or not so well.

Temporary hatcheries have been used to rebuild the summer chum runs in numerous Hood Canal streams. After boosting the numbers, most hatcheries have been discontinued. Now, the future of these fish will be determined by the quality of the habitat and changes in the natural system.

If you click over to the Sunday story, you will have access to a more in-depth series I wrote in 2003, before many of the recent successes could be reported.

I’m not working today, because I’ve been hit by some kind of bug that’s sapped my energy, so I won’t write more right now. I just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of my Sunday piece about the summer chum.

UPDATE (Tuesday, June 23): I’m back in action today and realized that I had not included the Web sites that will give you a ton of information about Hood Canal summer chum:
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
National Marine Fisheries Service

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The Southern Resident killer whales, which frequent Puget Sound, are acting a little strangely of late and their actions are making a few people nervous.

I always look forward to hearing about their arrival to the San Juan Islands in early June. Ideally, someone will see all three pods of orcas getting together in one big reunion called a “superpod” with more than 80 whales splashing about together.

Last year, the superpod occurred on June 3, according to Howard Garrett of Orca Network. Sometimes the orcas show up earlier than that and sometimes they come in later, but generally by mid-June all three pods are hunting chinook in and around the San Juans.

Their “late” arrival this year is not the only thing that’s disconcerting, however. J pod, which is generally in and out of our inland waters frequently, was gone the entire month of April. Now the pod is gone again and has not been seen since May 25.

Also worrisome is how the whales have split into smaller family groups. Nine animals in L pod (known as the L-12s) have been around until possibly leaving today. Meanwhile, twice that many whales in L pod are somewhere unknown.

Two members of K pod have been in and around the islands, but another 16 or so whales are somewhere else.

“It is very worrisome,” said Susan Berta of Orca Network. “I know a lot of researchers who want to wait for the data, but things seem to be changing and we are getting these oddities. Also, they are absent more and more.

“All the naturalists that we have talked to are just really surprised at this,” Susan told me. “They think that it is not something good to have these bits and pieces of pods showing up and the larger groups not showing up.”

Nobody knows where most of the orcas are right now, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, said Brad Hanson, a researcher with the National Marine Fisheries Service. It’s pretty clear that there aren’t many salmon in the San Juan Islands at the moment.

We are either seeing a weak run of chinook salmon or a late run, Brad told me. Maybe the whales have found some fish somewhere else.

“It’s like when you go fishing, do you leave fish to find fish?” he asked. “If they are in a spot with adequate foraging opportunities, they may just stay there.”

There are rumors of more abundant salmon in the Queen Charlotte Islands in Canada — a vast area with lots of inlets where orcas could easily go unreported.

“These animals are mobile predators,” Brad noted. “They can move throughout their range in a very short period of time. Fish are either late or low, but they are not present right now. We hope they (the whales) are taking advantage of fish somewhere else.”

Lack of food in low-fish years has serious implications for the whales’ reproductive capabilities, as Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research recently documented. The abundance of fish could well determine whether the Southern Resident population rebuilds or goes extinct. That’s why so much attention is being paid to saving the salmon, for the sake of the entire ecosystem.

“If the whales were here now, we’d be concerned,” Hanson said, “because it would mean they’re not finding fish somewhere else.”

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Federal biologists are really stirring things up in Northern California. They have determined that the irrigation system in the vast Central Valley farm region jeopardizes the future of several species of fish as well as Puget Sound’s killer whales.

The killer whale angle is worth some discussion — but first the larger picture.

“What is at stake here is not just the survival of species but the health of entire ecosystems and the economies that depend on them,” Rod Mcinnis, southwest regional director for NOAA’s Fisheries Service said in a news release. “We are ready to work with our federal and state partners, farmers and residents to find solutions that benefit the economy, environment and Central Valley families.”

Changing the water system to meet the requirements of threatened and endangered species could reduce water supplies by 5 to 7 percent, significantly affecting farm production and drinking water supplies. Several proposed projects — valued at hundreds of millions of dollars — could help balance that out. To see the technical reports, go to NOAA’s Web site on the issue.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger objected to the findings in a written statement:

“This federal biological opinion puts fish above the needs of millions of Californians and the health and security of the world’s eighth largest economy. The piling on of one federal court decision after another in a species-by-species approach is killing our economy and undermining the integrity of the Endangered Species Act. I will be asking for a meeting with Secretary Salazar and Secretary Locke to discuss our concerns with these biological opinions, and my Administration will be pursuing every possible avenue to reconcile the harmful effects of these decisions.”

Court action is almost certain.

Reporters Kelly Zito of the San Francisco Chronicle and Colin Sullivan of the New York Times’ “Greenwire” do a good job in fleshing out this story from the California perspective.

It’s interesting to see the federal biologists address the plight of the Southern Resident killer whales with respect to water use in California. These orcas frequent Puget Sound, but they are spending a great deal of their time along the West Coast down to Monterey Bay. The bottom line in the biological opinion is that salmon availability along the coast could be a key factor in whether the population is able to avoid extinction.

Environmental groups were quick to argue that if water operations in Northern California can raise the risk of extinction to intolerable levels, then surely the dams on the Columbia River ought to be a concern.

“The recent National Marine Fisheries Service conclusion linking destruction of salmon habitat to harm to killer whales is a breath of fresh air,” said Kathy Fletcher, executive director for People for Puget Sound in a statement. “Our killer whales are at critically low numbers, and NMFS has recognized that what we do to salmon in freshwater impacts our orcas in the ocean. But it doesn’t make sense to protect salmon for whales to eat in California while at the same time ignoring the effect of dams on fish in the whales’ backyard.”

The issue of what to do about the dams remains before a federal judge. The Obama administration is considering whether to continue with the Bush approach to leave the dams in place or revisit the issue.

“The fiction that the dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers have no effect on the food supply for orcas is one of many failings in the Columbia and Snake River biological opinion,” said Steve Mashuda of Earthjustice, which represents the groups in the case. “Our killer whales shouldn’t have to travel all the way to Monterey Bay to find a decent meal.”

To understand why the federal biologists consider water activities in California critical to the survival of the Southern Resident killer whales, I’ve pulled some comments from the Biological Opinion and Conference Opinion on the Long-Term Operations of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project (PDF 12.7mb):

(more…)

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has raised objections over a planned demonstration of fish-throwing at a veterinary conference.

The idea was to invite fishmongers from Pike Place Market to toss fish around as part of their appearance at the conference of the American Veterinary Medical Association next month in Seattle. It’s part of the act at the market.

Now PETA is saying if the demonstration is to be held at all, the fish-tossers should throw rubber fish.

After watching KCPQ (Channel 13)’s story last night about PETA’s objections to the demonstration, I was ready to question PETA’s logic, if not the sanity of the group. PETA already has something of a flaky reputation.

While watching the TV news report, I was literally hooting at what seemed to be the notion that PETA was objecting to the fish-throwing at the Pike Place Market.

“These fish are dead!” I said laughing. “How can PETA say tossing fish around is disrespectful? If you want to talk about disrespect, spend some time on a fishing boat, where fish are rounded up in a net and dumped into the hold. If you want to talk about disrespect, visit a salmon hatchery, where fish are sliced open to remove the eggs. If you want to talk about disrespect, think about killing the fish, cooking the fish, cutting the fish into pieces and eating it!”

OK, I didn’t really say all that in so many words. But that was the essence of my logical argument. I thought PETA was really missing the boat, so to speak, by arguing about fish-tossing, when people have been making an honorable living from fishing for thousands of years.

Then I went to PETA’s Web site and read the press release and letter to the veterinary group. I realized that PETA had not missed these greater points at all. It was the news reports that came up short. Reporters, both television and print, were so amused by PETA’s objections to fish-tossing that they failed to pick up the nuance of PETA’s argument.

KCPQ may have realized the inadequacy of the report, as it held an in-studio interview this morning with PETA’s president Ingrid Newkirk.

It turns out that PETA is not objecting to fish-tossing in general — at least not so much in this letter. The group continues to object to the killing and eating of all animals, and believes that net fishing is a cruel way for fish to die. Organizers were making the point that veterinarians — charged with protecting and treating animals — should not celebrate such cruelty by tossing fish about in an amusing way.

PETA promotes veganism. It is pretty well established that eating lower on the food chain has less impact on the environment. I find the argument against meat-eating logical, and I have cut back my personal consumption of meat and chicken to some degree.

But some of PETA’s campaigns are so removed from common sense that a large number of people refuse to take the group seriously. PETA organizers acknowledge that they do crazy things to get attention, but maybe they should work harder on their nuanced message. To be effective, PETA representatives must make a connection with people who don’t already agree with them.

As hard as PETA tries, the message frequently seems off the mark, especially if the group is trying to reach logical people — let alone hard-bitten folks who believe in human domination over other species.

PETA’s letter protesting the fish-tossing demonstration includes this: “Surely the AVMA would not describe an event as ‘fun, educational and inspiring’ if the animals being tossed around were lambs, hamsters, or cats.”

I would have to say that most of us don’t eat hampsters or cats. Personally, the idea of tossing dead bodies does not bother me much, as long as these animals were treated well while they were alive.

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Each June, killer whale observers of all varieties wait for the three Puget Sound pods to arrive in the San Juan Islands for an extended stay.

I usually mark the arrival with a news story reminding local folks about the social structure and behavior of our resident pods. I was prepared to write this story when I heard that L pod was headed south through Johnstone Strait along Vancouver Island. Instead, I’ll wait. Here’s the story I did write for tomorrow’s Kitsap Sun:

For a brief time this week, it appeared that Puget Sound’s killer whales had returned to Washington waters to take up their summer residence.

Several members of L pod were seen off Victoria Tuesday, after traveling along the east side of Vancouver Island in Canada, according to reports compiled by Orca Network. But, instead of heading on east into the San Juan Islands, the L-pod orcas turned west into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, headed for the Pacific Ocean.

All three groups of Puget Sound orcas — J, K and L pods — typically spend their summers hunting salmon in and around the San Juans. While J and K pods have been around part of the winter, L pod last appeared for only a day or two in February. When L pod showed up Tuesday, it was a good bet that the whales were here for a longer stay, said Howard Garrett of Orca Network.

“They did a quick peek in, then headed out,” he said. “The supposition is that they didn’t find enough to eat.”

The whales’ primary diet is chinook salmon, which are normally running at this time of year. Maybe, Garrett said, they’ll be back in few days.

Gov. Chris Gregoire has proclaimed June “Orca Awareness Month.” For a list of events, visit Orca Network.

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State and local officials are waiting anxiously to learn who will get the federal stimulus money passing through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The money will be targeted for habitat improvement.

I can’t find the national numbers, but I recall that NOAA had requests for maybe 10 times the money it had available. That means there are going to be a few disappointed people and groups around the country.

Some people expected to hear an announcement of the results several weeks ago, but the Obama administration appears to be making a list and checking it twice — maybe trying to figure out which groups are naughty and nice.

Anyway, the Puget Sound Leadership Council moved ahead to award some state funds to make sure critical projects get under way this summer one way or another.

The Nisqually estuary restoration has been named a priority and will receive a good share of the money, but Hood Canal also remains a priority, with projects moving from the drawing board to construction on the water. Two Hood Canal estuary-restoration projects, totaling $2.7 million, are among five Puget Sound projects approved for state funding this week.

The Hood Canal projects are a $1.7 million restoration in the Skokomish River estuary and a $1 million restoration in the Little Quilcene estuary. The other three projects, totaling $1.6 million, are associated with the Nisqually River restoration project.

Check out the press release from the Puget Sound Partnership. Here’s the brief story I prepared for Saturday’s Kitsap Sun:
(more…)

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Geoduck harvesting remains controversial. Some people are convinced that it creates long-lasting damage to the seabed and to the creatures that dwell on the bottom. Others are equally convinced that damage is minimal and does not last very long.

I have never determined for myself if one side or the other is absolutely right, or if it depends largely on bottom conditions at a specific site. As a reporter, I continue to listen to both sides and try to give them each fair treatment.

One thing is for sure, however: The money that goes into state coffers from the sale of geoducks is quite remarkable. In a story published in today’s Kitsap Sun, I quote state officials who say the market has remained strong, despite the downturn in the economy.

In a single area north of Blake Island in Kitsap County, the state will receive $1.4 million for geoducks harvested this year alone. Similar amounts can be expected from that area for the next few years.

I will entertain comments and links to documents from anyone who wants to discuss the damage issue. I must give some weight, however, to the National Marine Fisheries Service, which has approved a Geoduck Habitat Conservation Plan and incidental take permit under the Endangered Species Act. (See the NMFS Web site on geoducks.)

The reports, which are based largely on research by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, give the geoduck fishery a “low-effect” rating when it comes to threatened and endangered species.

“A low effect HCP is one that NOAA’s Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determine to have minor or negligible effects on federally listed, proposed, or candidate species and their habitats covered under the HCP,” according to the NMFS Web site.

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A research effort to restore “threatened” steelhead to several rivers draining into Hood Canal is beginning to yield some interesting and important results.

In a story I wrote for Friday’s edition of the Kitsap Sun, I described this multi-agency research effort led by Barry Berejikian of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The work keeps piling up critical data that offers hope for the recovery of steelhead in Hood Canal and maybe other areas as well. (See also the video of the latest release.)

One line of study points to the success of growing steelhead more slowly, so that they are ready to go out to sea in two years instead of just one, as in most steelhead hatcheries. Growing two-year-old smolts mimics natural conditions and seems to dramatically increase the chance of survival.

Other work involved in the Hood Canal Steelhead Project is focused on counting fish coming and going, tracking their movements with implanted acoustic tags and examining any shifts in genetics.

Last year, I wrote about the last of the propagated steelhead to be released into the Hamma Hamma River, where supplementation started a decade before. (See Kitsap Sun, March 16, 2008.) Thanks to this supplementation project, the number of steelhead returning to the Hamma Hamma have increased from an annual average of 17 to more than 100.

Barry Berejikian tells me that he won’t be alarmed if the numbers of returning adults to the Hamma Hamma drops somewhat, now that supplementation has stopped. We won’t really know the carrying capacity of the river for a few years, but it’s important to understand that the productive part of the river is relatively short because of an upstream fish barrier.

Available habitat is not so limited with other Hood Canal streams, such as the Dewatto, which is now gaining increasing attention.

So why did the steelhead decline to such feeble numbers in the first place if the habitat has always been there?

One theory is that fishing knocked the numbers of spawners down so low that the populations were just hanging on. If that’s true, then a supplementation program could be the trick to restoring healthy numbers to sustain the run. The Hamma Hamma could be the case that supports this idea.

For additional information about the Hood Canal Steelhead Project, go to the Long Live the Kings Web site.

For other information about Puget Sound steelhead, which are listed as threatened under the Endanagered Species Act, see two Web pages by the National Marine Fisheries Service:

Puget Sound steelhead distinct population segment
Petition to list Puget Sound Steelhead

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