Watching Our Water Ways

We should take a moment to recall another man of legendary proportion, a man who will be forever linked to the fishing history of this region. Chet Gausta, 95, of Poulsbo died Jan. 16, with a continuing record of catching the largest salmon ever reeled in and officially weighed out in Washington state.

Chet Gausta

Kitsap Sun reporter Josh Farley interviewed Gausta in 2005 when Josh worked at the North Kitsap Herald. Click here for his story, which recounts the excitement of Gausta’s hooking and landing the 70.5-pound chinook in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. His younger brother Lloyd and his uncle Carl Knutson were on board his boat at the time.

During the battle, the big fish broke the surface of the water for an instant, and Gausta recalled his brother shouting, “You don’t have a salmon; you have a porpoise.”

Here’s Josh’s recollection:

“Interviewing Chester “Chet” Gausta is an experience I will never forget. I was working at the North Kitsap Herald in 2005 and he invited me to his home near Scandia, where the salmon that made him famous hung mounted on his family room wall.

“That 70-pound whopper loomed over the entire room and Gausta’s smile about it — even 41 years after he’d caught it — never faded during our entire interview.

“It was so easy to imagine Chet, with his brother and uncle, exhausted, as they rumbled back to Seiku from the Straight of Juan de Fuca on that September day in 1964.”

Gausta’s name is still firmly embedded in the record books, where a variety of fish are listed. See the Land Big Fish website for details.

Chet Gausta, middle, shows off the big fish he caught off Sekiu in 1964. Chet's younger brother Lloyd, left, and his uncle Carl Knutson were with him on the boat.
Photo courtesy of Poulsbo Historical Society/Nesby

Chad Gillespie, a Kitsap Sun hunting and fishing columnist, visited with Chet Gausta about a year after Josh did. He wrote about him for the Sun on Sept. 12, 2006.

As a young man, Chet also was an all-around athlete who was offered a baseball/basketball scholarship to Washington State College. Instead, he played shortstop for the Poulsbo Town Team until joining the Armed Forces going into World World II. He later played on the Poulsbo VFW basketball team and participated in the 1948 national tournament. He was inducted into the Kitsap Oldtimers Hall of Fame in 1995.

His family submitted an obituary, which appeared in the Kitsap Sun yesterday.

While searching the Sun’s archives, I also found a letter-to-the-editor that Chet had written back in 1993. I was especially interested, because of the reporting I have done regarding Poulsbo’s Johnson Creek in 2008.

Here’s the letter:
(more…)

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Hood Canal has lost one of the region’s original environmentalists.

Andy Rogers

Andy Rogers, who died two weeks ago at age 94, might be surprised that I would call him an environmentalist — and he probably wouldn’t like it.

But when it comes to nature, few people could match Andy’s love for Hood Canal. He worked as a trapper, logger and fisherman and often talked about the bounty once found in Hood Canal but now lost to the advance of our civilized society.

Andy would never deny someone the right to move to the Hood Canal region, to build a house, to enjoy the water and woods. But he understood better than most about what development has done to the natural world.

“Every time anybody moves here, it gets worse — and that includes me,” he once told me. “You can’t do anything about it. People have rights. It seems our rights are going to kill us in the country.”

If Andy were alive this week, he’d be one of the first I would call to ask about whether humpback whales — like the one observed on Friday — ever showed up in Hood Canal. (See yesterday’s Water Ways.) Other longtime residents I contacted could not remember seeing humpbacks anytime in the past.

I once asked Andy about resident killer whales — the ones that eat fish. The National Marine Fisheries Service was about to designate “critical habitat” for our endangered orcas, and the agency was not listing Hood Canal as a critical place for them to live.

Andy thought back and remembered watching killer whales when he was younger — and even hearing them breach before he could see them. “We called them ‘blackfish’ in those days,” he said.

I relied on Andy Rogers to put Hood Canal into historical perspective for me while writing a series of articles called “Hood Canal: Splendor at Risk,” a project that grew into a book by the same name.

Much of the Hood Canal region was logged before Andy was born, but he lived to see many second-growth harvests and some areas that grew into harvestable trees for a third time. As a child, Hood Canal was a wilder place.

“When I was 10 or 11 years old,” he said, “I saw a sign that said, ‘No trespassing.’ I went and asked my mother what that was, because I had never seen that before. People went where they wanted to go.”

Some wild animals have been displaced by logging, but the changes were not permanent. Rogers told me that humans remain in control and can decide whether to tolerate cougars, wolves and bears. In days gone by, he said, the answer was simply to kill them on sight.

“Man’s the only one of the species who can control how many there are going to be,” he said.

Andy recalled when salmon were plentiful and arrived on a regular schedule.

“I knew the salmon would start up the creek about the 20th of August,” he told me. “Pert’ near all these stream were full of salmon by Labor Day.”

I think the loss of the salmon saddened him. He once suggested that all fishing be stopped for four years — something that seemed out of character for Andy, a fisherman. But the result, he said, would be an abundance of salmon. People would be able to see the possibilities and learn how to manage salmon for the larger numbers that were possible.

Andy lamented the loss of steelhead. He told me that he remembers when they were thick in all Kitsap County streams. At the time, I wasn’t sure I believed that, because steelhead are so scarce today. You generally go to coastal rivers to find them. But later, after steehead were listed as a threatened species, state biologists told me there was no apparent reason for steelhead not to survive here — except for the fact that there are no fish left to breed.

Rogers said it was poaching that wiped them out. He remembers a man who ran a black market for the prized fish, and this “outlaw” foolishly netted the streams until all the steelhead were gone.

Andy supported reasonable efforts to protect wildlife habitat, “but you cannot shut the door and keep people out,” he insisted.

I concluded my profile of Andy with a comment he made: “Id sure like to stick around and see what this place is like in 50 years.”

If that were only possible, I’m sure many people — including Andy’s coffee and card friends at Seabeck Store — wouldn’t mind listening to his stories a little longer.

At Andy’s request, no services are planned. A military honor ceremony was held today with his family in attendance. Andy Rogers was an Army veteran of World War II.

Survivors include his children, Albert Rogers, Jo Ann Belis, Barbara Smith and Charles Rogers, along with many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Jo Ann told me that she wanted to offer a special thanks to members of the Seabeck Community who had supported Andy through the years. His family placed an obituary in the Kitsap Sun on Jan. 25.

Andy Rogers offered many memories of Hood Canal through the years. This photo, taken in 1991 on Stavis Bay near his home, appeared in the book Hood Canal Splendor at Risk.

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Work resumed yesterday on the Elwha Dam site after biologists determined that the annual chum salmon migration had ended. The work originally was to be delayed until Jan. 1.

The Elwha Dam site on Sept. 17 (Click to enlarge) / Elwha web cam

Work in and near the river stopped on Nov. 1 to protect fish runs from heavy sediment, as scheduled in a work plan adopted several years ago. Three work stoppages — known as fish windows — are planned each year.

Adult chum salmon were captured as they returned and were transferred to the fish hatchery operated by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, according to a news release from Olympic National Park. Offspring of those chum will be released into the river in the spring.

It’s been awhile since I posted photos from the demolition site. As you can see from the pictures on this page, the change since mid-September is dramatic.

Elwha Dam site today (Dec. 20) (Click to enlarge) / Elwha web cam

Most of the Elwha Dam powerhouse has been removed, and work is scheduled for completion at the end of this month, according to the park’s Dam Removal Blog. Materials from the old power plant are being recycled.

All the old power lines and poles associated with Elwha and Glines Canyon dams have been removed.

The 120-foot-tall surge tower was pushed over Thursday.

The river was diverted back into the right channel yesterday, as water levels behind the dam continue to go down.

Revegetation of the two reservoir areas started in November and continued into December with the planting of about 12,000 plants. Another 18,000 plants are planned for January and February.

If you’d like to watch the entire demolition of either dam to date, go to the Elwha River Restoration Project webcams and click on “Java” for any of the cameras. The fastest way to watch the entire time-lapse series is by putting the delay on 0.

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It’s the water, or maybe it’s just the nasty stuff that’s in the water.

A new series of studies by federal researchers is delving into the question of which pollutants in urban streams are killing coho salmon.

David Baldwin of Northwest Fisheries Science Center mixes a chemical soup of pollutants found in urban stormwater. Coho salmon will be kept in the brown bath for 24 hours to measure the effects.
Photo by Tiffany Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

As I describe in a story in today’s Kitsap Sun, the new studies involve coho returning to the Suquamish Tribe’s Grovers Creek Hatchery in North Kitsap.

Of course, pollutants in streams are just one factor affecting salmon in the Puget Sound region, where development continues to alter streamflows and reduce vegetation, despite efforts to protect and restore habitat. But pollution may play a role that has gone largely unnoticed in some streams.

The new studies continue an investigation that began more than a decade ago with the involvement of numerous agencies. By now, most of us have heard about the effects of copper on salmon, but the latest round of studies will look at the collection of pollutants found in stormwater to see how they work together. It may be possible to pinpoint the chemical concentrations that result in critical physiological changes in salmon.

The latest work involves a team led by David Baldwin of NOAA Fisheries and Steve Damm of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Suquamish Tribe is providing the fish, along with facilities and support.

For information on the ongoing effort to understand how toxic chemicals affect salmon, review these pages on the website of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center:

Acute die-offs of adult coho salmon 
returning to spawn in restored urban streams

The impacts of dissolved copper on olfactory 
function in juvenile coho salmon

Mechanosensory impacts of non-point source pollutants in fish

Cardiovascular defects in fish embryos exposed 
to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

A page called “Coho Pre-spawn Mortality in Urban Streams” presents a series of videos that show the advance of an apparent neurological disease that first causes disorientation in coho salmon and then death. The video is taken in Seattle’s Longfellow Creek, an urban stream.

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Salmon-watching season may be somewhat shortened this year, but recent rains have encouraged large numbers of fish to swim into streams on the Kitsap Peninsula and probably elsewhere in Puget Sound.

A coho salmon tries to leap into an outlet from the salmon-rearing ponds at Otto Jarstad Park in Gorst last week.
Kitsap Sun photo by Meegan M. Reid

It appears that coho and chum salmon were hanging out in saltwater waiting for adequate rains, which arrived last week. I covered the issue fairly extensively in a story in Friday’s Kitsap Sun.

Normally, the peak of the chum salmon run occurs around Thanksgiving on the east side of the Kitsap Peninsula. Jon Oleyar, a biologist with the Suquamish Tribe, tells me that the salmon run is probably now on the decline, with dead and dying fish beginning to be seen today in larger numbers.

For most of this week (at least after tomorrow night), the rains will probably hold off for awhile. Check out the forecast from the National Weather Service. Drier weather could help the streams run clearer.

Salmon-watchers on the Kitsap Peninsula have seen a decline in coho in recent years, and biologists say it is probably because streamflows have become more “flashy.” More roads and other impervious surfaces carry water to the streams faster and allow for less infiltration. Losing infiltration means lower summer flows, which are important for coho, because coho remain in freshwater the first summer of their lives.

Anyway, this year we’re seeing more coho in the local streams. Jon tells me they are mainly hatchery fish, probably strays from the Suquamish Tribe’s net pens in Agate Passage. Those fish were meant to improve fishing for both tribal and sport fishers, but some got away. Whether the coho hatchery strays are beneficial or harmful to the wild runs remains a subject of debate.

Some of the best salmon-viewing spots are shown on an interactive map that Angela Hiatt and I made four years ago. See Kitsap Salmon runs. If anyone knows of other good spots with public access, please share them in the comments section.

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U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray have announced their support for a plan that would add 130,000 acres of land to wilderness areas in Olympic National Forest, designate 23 rivers as “wild and scenic” and open the door to adding 20,000 acres to Olympic National Park.

This map shows areas proposed for public wilderness, park and river designations. / Click on image for full map (PDF 10.6 mb).

As I describe in a story in today’s Kitsap Sun, the proposal is based on a plan put forth by a coalition of 10 conservation groups called Wild Olympics.

Connie Gallant, chairwoman of Wild Olympics, told me that the group has been working with stakeholder and community groups to consolidate support on the Olympic Peninsula. Quoting Gallant’s statement on the website:

“Over the past two years, Wild Olympics has been reaching out to Peninsula communities to build support from diverse local voices, listen to concerns and get feedback on our draft proposal. More than 4,500 Peninsula residents have signed our petition, and nearly 200 Peninsula businesses, farms, faith leaders, hunting and fishing groups, elected officials, conservation and civic groups support Wild Olympics.”

It is not obvious that wilderness is a true water issue — the focus of this blog — but Bill Taylor, vice president of Taylor Shellfish Farms, is fairly convincing:

“The two largest shellfish hatcheries that supply seed to the West Coast industry are located on Hood Canal. Well over 150 jobs are provided in Hood Canal alone by the industry, not including the indirect jobs such as processing, sales and shipping. By protecting Olympic Peninsula forest and river watersheds, we ensure clean and safe water so that shellfish companies can continue to grow and further benefit the economy and ecology of Washington state.”

The above is one testimonial on the Wild Olympics website, which also includes statements by Bremerton’s Mike Hank of Veterans Conservation Corps, Mayor Michelle Sandoval of Port Townsend, Sequim author Tim McNulty of Olympic Park Associates, Hoodsport’s Ron Gold of RG Forestry Consultants, Aberdeen’s Roy Nott of Paneltech and Gardiner’s Dave Bailey of Greywolf Fly Fishing Club and Trout Unlimited.

Wild Olympics was started by Olympic Park Associates, Olympic Forest Coalition, Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society and North Olympic Group – Sierra Club. Added later were Washington Wilderness Coalition, The Mountaineers, Pew Environment Group, Sierra Club, American Rivers and American Whitewater.

To counteract the work of the Wild Olympics Campaign, Dan Boeholt of Aberdeen founded Working Wild Olympics, because he does not believe wilderness designations will be helpful.

“We’re arguing that if you put these lands into wilderness, it will restrict public access,” Boeholt told me. “There are miles and miles of roads that would be affected.”

Dicks and Murray say they will propose specific legislation after listening to the public. These meetings have been scheduled:

Port Townsend: Dec. 1, 5 to 7 p.m., Chapel Building, Fort Worden State Park Conference Center.

Shelton: Dec. 2, 5 to 7 p.m., Shelton Civic Center, 525 W. Cota Street.

Port Angeles: Dec. 3, 3 to 5 p.m., Museum at the Carnegie, 207 S. Lincoln St.

Hoquiam: Dec. 4, 3 to 5 p.m., Central Elementary School Library, 310 Simpson Ave.

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An axiom among orca observers goes something like this: When you believe you have figured out what killer whales will do, they’ll do something else.

I’ve become accustomed to writing an annual story that lets people know when chinook salmon runs are dwindling in the northern waters of Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia and when chum salmon runs are beginning to build up in South Puget Sound.

It happens in the fall, and it generally means that our Southern Resident orcas will begin checking out the buffet table in areas from Whidbey Island to Tacoma and occasionally as far south as Olympia. During this time, ferryboat riders aboard the Kingston, Bainbridge Island, Bremerton and Vashon Island ferries begin seeing the whales more frequently.

It appears that the table is now set and waiting for the whales, but that doesn’t mean they’ll show up for dinner on time, as I describe in a story I wrote for yesterday’s Kitsap Sun.

Lots of people reported seeing the orcas last week, when they were spotted from all the usual ferries, including some rare sightings on the Mukilteo run. The video on this page was taken at Point Robinson on Vashon Island and shows how exciting it can be to watch whales from the shore.

Although the Southern Residents showed up in South Sound only twice in October, historical records reveal that as long as chum are around, the whales — most notably J Pod — can be expected to return through December. One analysis of whale movements was conducted as part of a tidal energy project for the Snohomish County Public Utility District. See Marine Mammal Pre-Installation Study (PDF 12.9 mb). (Note the large file.)

While the Southern Residents are known to eat chum in the fall, there is no doubt that their preferred prey is chinook salmon, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. How to make sure the orcas are getting enough chinook to eat is part of a major study effort now under way, including a series of workshops about the effects of salmon fishing on the killer whales.

A report of the first workshop, held Sept. 21-23, contains an incredible amount of scientific information related food availability and the value of different salmon to our local orcas. Check out this page: Evaluating the Effects of Salmon Fisheries on Southern Resident Killer Whales.

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I’ve been away from “Water Ways” quite a lot lately while covering a trial in Tacoma involving safety and environmental concerns at Kitsap Rifle and Revolver Club. Kitsap County is suing the club over operations at its gun range near Bremerton. (Watch for my “live blogging” or read the stories on the Kitsap Sun website.)

Meanwhile, I’d like to call your attention to a story by Kitsap Sun reporter Brynn Grimley, who took a “salmon tour” via kayak last weekend. Her close-up story and some great photos by Meeghan Reid can be seen in Sunday’s Kitsap Sun.

Whale Trail poster / Click on image to download poster (PDF 1.5 mb)

As chum salmon begin to arrive in small streams throughout the Kitsap Peninsula, you may wish to carefully observe their migration and spawning. Several years ago, a couple of us at the Sun created a map with videos depicting the best viewing spots. Check out Kitsap Sun Salmon Map. I hope to update the videos with new information when I get time.

Another map that may be of interest is the “Whale Trails” map that purports to show the best places in Puget Sound to view marine mammals. Unfortunately, there are no places shown on the Kitsap Peninsula. I might recommend Point No Point County Park in North Kitsap, locations on the Kingston waterfront, and Bachmann Park in the city of Bremerton, as well as several places on Bainbridge Island.

The Whale Trail organization sent me a poster for the Washington State Ferries that will help riders know what kinds of marine mammals they may be seeing. This is a great idea, and I hope people will take the opportunity to learn about the kinds of animals common in the waters of Puget Sound. Click on the image (PDF 2.5 mb), above right, to download the poster.

The Puget Sound killer whales are a little late this year in making excursions into South Puget Sound. They typically come south hunting for chum salmon after the runs of chinook decline up north. I’ll have more to say about this when we begin to see them more frequently, assuming they are just late this year.

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“Deconstruction” of Glines Canyon Dam on the Elwha River appears to be progressing rapidly. A fourth notch in the dam was completed yesterday, and water is now pouring through all four of the gaps.

Alan Durning of Sightline Institute (blog) pieced together the video, at right, from still photos taken by a remote webcam at the dam. Check out the cameras on the Elwha River Restoration Project webpage.

Work will continue on the removal of both Elwha and Glines Canyon dam until the end of this month, when a “fish window” will shut down operations on the water. Work will shift to demolition of penstocks, powerhouses and other structures — work that will not release sediment into the river, according to the Elwha Blog provided by Olympic National Park. Construction in the water can resume at the end of the year.

At the Elwha Dam, contractors are blasting away to remove the left spillway foundation down into bedrock to form the downstream end of a diversion channel. The diversion channel is scheduled to be put into operation the week of Oct. 17, when the river will flow through the channel at an increased rate, drawing down Lake Aldwell.

Elwha Dam / Olympic National Park webcam

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The Elwha watershed promises to be an outdoor laboratory for the revival of an ecosystem after two dams are removed from the Elwha River.

Elwha Dam construction begins. (Click on image for webcam page.)
Olympic National Park photo

Dam removal began Thursday at Glines Canyon Dam, as I traveled to Port Angeles for a conference of more than 350 scientists and other interested persons. This group came together to learn about baseline studies conducted to date and to hear about anticipated changes in the ecosystem. Check out my story in Sunday’s Kitsap Sun.

Meanwhile, a controversy over a fish hatchery operated by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe threatens to erupt into a lawsuit. Several environmental groups have issued a 60-day notice to sue under the Endangered Species Act, saying raising steelhead from another area — Chambers Creek — could imperil the recovery of threatened chinook salmon and bull trout in the Elwha. See reporter Lynda Mapes’ story in the Seattle Times.

Will Stelle of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which oversees federal protections for salmon, said discussions about the hatchery are ongoing, but federal treaties assure the tribes a right to fish, and those rights cannot be ignored. A five-year moratorium on fishing has been imposed, but tribal officials say they may need hatchery-reared fish when fishing resumes.

About a year ago, I briefly described the restoration plan for each species — including salmon and steelhead — in a package of stories for the Kitsap Sun. See “Elwha Project Expected to Blast Open Nature’s Door to Bountiful Fish Runs.”

As for last week’s Elwha River Science Symposium, it was a remarkable group of researchers who discussed all aspects of ecosystem restoration, from physical processes like water and sediment, to all kinds of plants and animals. To get a taste of the presentation, read through the conference abstracts (PDF 584 kb).

I mentioned a few of the presentations in Sunday’s Kitsap Sun, and I could talk about them for hours. There was one presentation about birds that surprised me, and I wanted to share some of the conclusions with you.

John McLaughlin of Huxley College at Western Washington University explored the question of how birds might help restore vegetation in the reservoirs and flood plains associated with the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams.

Of 39 major native plants in the watershed, 23 have their seeds dispersed by birds. That’s 59 percent of the plants of interest. If managers could get the birds working for them, they might not need to plant as much vegetation by hand.

That 59 percent is higher than most temperate regions of the world, where normally birds disperse seeds from 25 to 40 percent of the plants, McLaughlin said. But it’s a lower percentage than for most tropical regions, where birds may disperse up to 90 percent of all the plants in the area.

By watching birds fly from vegetated areas to more barren areas and collecting samples of their scat, McLaughlin found that robins disperse more seeds than all other birds combined. In fact, the total was close to 100 percent for robins. While there are plenty of other bird species in the ecosystem, most typically do not fly from one habitat type to another, McLaughlin told the gathering.

He also found that most of the seeds deposited by robins ended up in and near logjams and piles of woody debris.

“Birds are agents of restoration,” he told the group, “but for them to work with us, you have to give them what they need, and that’s large woody debris.”

If one wants to use birds to replant the forest, the first step is to consider which plants you want to disperse, he said. Then downed trees and limbs could be pulled together into a pile, or one could simply leave existing piles in strategic locations. The woody piles must be located far enough from the desirable plants that the birds can make a difference in dispersing seeds. But if the piles are too far away, the birds may not cooperate with the plan.

As for the concern about birds dispersing invasive plants as well as desirable ones, many of the undesirables were removed from the area around the dams in preparation for dam removal. The concern about invasives is reduced further by understanding that only five of the 20 invasive plants are dispersed by birds.

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