In what is becoming an annual event, portions of Hood Canal have
changed colors in recent days, the result of a large bloom of
armored plankton called coccolithophores.
Coccolithophore from Hood
Canal’s Dabob Bay viewed with scanning electron microscope.
Image: Brian Bill, Northwest Fisheries Science
Center
Teri King, a plankton expert with Washington Sea Grant, has been
among the first to take notice of the turquoise blooms each year
they occur.
“Guess who is back?” Teri wrote in the blog
Bivalves for Clean Water. “She showed up June 24 in Dabob Bay
and has been shining her Caribbean blueness throughout the bay and
spreading south toward Quilcene Bay.”
Yesterday, I noticed a turquoise tinge in Southern Hood Canal
from Union up to Belfair, although the color was not as intense as
I’ve seen in past years.
The color is the result of light reflecting off elaborate
platelets of calcium carbonate, called coccoliths, which form
around the single-celled coccolithophores. The species in Hood
Canal is typically Emiliania huxleyi.
Hood Canal and its surrounding watershed have been nominated as
a Sentinel Landscape, an exclusive designation that recognizes both
the natural resource values and the national defense mission of
special areas across the country.
USS Henry M. Jackson, a Trident
submarine, moves through Hood Canal in February on a return trip to
Naval Base Kitsap – Bangor.
U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Cmdr. Michael
Smith
If the designation is approved, it will bolster applications for
federal funding to protect and restore important habitats and to
maintain working forests in and around Hood Canal. Given the
uncertain budget for environmental programs under the Trump
administration, it wouldn’t hurt to have the Department of Defense
supporting the protection of Hood Canal.
The Sentinel Landscapes Partnership involves the U.S.
departments of Agriculture, Defense and Interior. The idea is to
coordinate the efforts of all three agencies in locations where
their priorities overlap, according to the
2016 Report on Sentinel Landscapes (PDF 5.6 mb).
A humpback whale, first
seen in Hood Canal three weeks ago, was spotted again
today.
Photo by Connie Gallant, Greenfleet Monitoring
Expeditions
History repeated itself today on Dabob Bay, where Connie and JD
Gallant were conducting research when a humpback whale surfaced
nearby — just as events unfolded three weeks ago when the couple
first reported the animal. See
Water Ways, Jan. 31, for the initial report and some background
on humpbacks.
Connie called me early this afternoon from her boat on Hood
Canal’s Dabob Bay, then she sent a photo and e-mail with this
description:
“We spotted it close to 12:20 p.m., and it put on a nice little
show for about 10 minutes, then disappeared — same pattern as on
1/27. It was playing in same area, between Taylor Shellfish Labs
and Broadspit.
“I was again on the computer inputting data as we headed north
on Dabob Bay when JD yelled the same, ‘Whale off the port bow!’
This time, I did not hesitate flying out of the cockpit, grabbing
camera on the way.”
Connie has a hunch that the whale likes her boat, the Sea
Turtle:
“If you take a peek at the contour of the bottom of the Sea
Turtle (see Greenfleet website), you
will see that it has 2 keels and a skag on the stern. We think that
this shape must be of interest to the whale, and it is saying
‘hello’ to the Turtle!
“And, just as the last time, it was totally awesome to watch it
frolic. I absolutely cannot believe our fortune.”
The humpback whale in Hood Canal may still be around. I received
an e-mail from Barbara Clark, who spotted the whale yesterday
(Friday) about 1:50 p.m. Both she and her husband Jim saw it this
time, in the very same spot that Jim noticed it on Jan. 30 —
specifically, just north of the Great Bend of Hood Canal toward the
eastern shore.
Susan Berta of Orca Network told me that someone else saw the
whale in southern Hood Canal about the same time.
These latest sightings only reinforce the mystery of the
humpback whale that must still be swimming around Hood Canal but
not making itself very obvious.
—–
A humpback whale made a rare appearance in Hood Canal’s Dabob
Bay at the end of last week, then mysteriously disappeared from
sight.
A humpback whale was
sighted Friday in Dabob Bay by researchers Connie and JD
Gallant.
Photo by Connie Gallant
As far as I can tell, Connie and JD Gallant, who were doing
research on the bay Friday afternoon, were among the very few to
see the humpback, or possibly two of them.
It makes you wonder how often large whales, such as humpbacks,
come into Hood Canal without anyone seeing them, or at least
reporting them.
“I was so thrilled,” Connie told me this morning as she
described the encounter.
JD was motoring their 40-foot research vessel, the Sea Turtle,
near Broadspit in the northern part of the estuary when he spotted
one or more whales surfacing. JD stopped the boat, pulled up the
water-testing meter, and yelled, “Whales off the port bow!”
Connie, who was below deck inputting data into a computer, ran
up and began shooting photos. JD told Connie he believed there were
two whales, but Connie only saw one.
Personally, I can’t remember anyone reporting humpbacks in Hood
Canal. I phoned several folks I know who live on the canal, and
nobody seems to recall ever seeing humpbacks. It is quite a
different situation when one talks about visits to Hood Canal by
gray whales or killer whales, which I’ve reported through the
years.
My most memorable experience was in 2005, when a group of six
transient killer whales spent more than five months swimming up and
down the shorelines of Hood Canal, feasting on seals and sea lions
whenever they got a chance. Those orcas stayed so long I thought
they might make the canal their permanent home.
John Calambokidis of Cascadia Research told me that he has a
general recollection of a humpback showing up in Hood Canal years
ago, but he could not locate any written reports of the sightings.
If someone was able to snap a picture of the underside of the fluke
(tail) of a humpback, John said he might be able to identify the
whale from a photographic catalog of humpbacks on the West
Coast.
John tells me that a January sighting of a humpback whale is
unusual, because most of the population is now on the breeding
grounds near the Hawaiian Islands or else off the coast of Mexico.
A few humpbacks are always around, he said, but it is worrisome
when any animal shows up in a place where it is not expected.
Historically, one population of humpbacks spent the winters in
the inland waters of northern Washington and southern British
Columbia, but they were largely wiped out by commercial whalers, he
said.
The West Coast population of humpbacks has been growing at about
7.5 percent a year since the early 1990s, according to
Calambokidis. The general population now stands at about 2,000
animals, compared to about 500 more than 20 years ago.
As for the recent humpback sighting, I would like to get a
report from anyone who may have seen this whale (or two) in Hood
Canal or from anyone who may have seen one in the past.
Connie said the whale or whales that she observed Friday
appeared to be “frolicking” — that is leaping out of the water,
twisting and turning. She said they seemed to be about the size or
her boat, about 40 feet long. That would make it a fairly young
humpback.
The encounter lasted about 15 minutes, then the whales seemed to
disappear, she said.
“We hung around for about an hour,” she said, “but they didn’t
surface again.”
Connie and JD, who operate Greenfleet Monitoring
Expeditions, have been collecting water-quality data —
including information on dissolved oxygen — from Quilcene and Dabob
bays.
The humpback whale spotted
in Dabob Bay disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived.
Photo by Connie Gallant
For years, I’ve heard complaints about tribal fishing. Frankly,
many people who complain about tribal fishing, or commercial
fishing in general, have no understanding of treaty rights or how
individual salmon stocks are managed.
Tarboo Bay
Washington Department of Ecology photo
Most don’t care about the work that goes into long-range
management plans, preseason forecasts or computer models of harvest
options, which make it possible to manage fisheries with
concurrence of state, tribal and federal entities. Most folks with
concerns wouldn’t think of accepting the public invitation to join
the annual discussions about harvest.
Occasionally, however, someone raises a concern that resonates
with managers and biologists who understand the issues. Such is the
case with fishing in Tarboo Bay, a story I told in
Friday’s Kitsap Sun.
It all comes down to a simple proposition: If salmon management
plans are working, then why aren’t we getting more chum and coho
into Tarboo Creek? Should we be content with ongoing productivity
well below what the stream appears capable of supporting?
Putting politics aside, should the overall management plan for
Hood Canal strive for some minimum escapement or maximum
exploitation rate on individual streams? Oh, what a complex plan
that would be! But if low escapement creates sustainability
problems on any stream, then someone needs to take a serious look
and not be hampered by plans that consider Hood Canal coho and chum
as aggregate stocks for all Hood Canal.
Maybe we should elevate Tarboo Bay to a test case, first with
some monitoring to determine the stock composition of the tribal
beach seine in question. If it turns out that this is an
all-or-nothing fishery, then one answer would be to move the
closure line farther out into Dabob Bay, as managers for the state
and two tribes agreed to do.
Beyond that, however, perhaps more attention should be given to
individual streams, their carrying capacity and trade-offs between
harvest and escapement. Interesting studies have been conducted for
listed species and a few other stocks in Hood Canal. See “Mid-Hood Canal
Juvenile Salmonid Evaluation…” But the need to improve
escapements of all species remains a concern.
I’m tempted to say that this is an emperor-has-no-clothes moment
when it comes to fisheries in Hood Canal, but I don’t believe
that’s accurate. It may seem that everybody understands the problem
and nobody wants to speak out. In reality, the problems are many;
they vary from place to place; and lots of people are speaking
out.
Maybe it is more like a house of cards that continues to grow.
Many weaknesses are found in the structure, but only so many can be
fixed at one time. So people just keep going, hoping for the
best.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has developed a
management framework to address these kinds of issues. See “21st Century Salmon and
Steelhead Initiative.” It seems like a good start, but the
agency must not forget that restoration comes together
stream-by-stream for harvest as well as for habitat.
Consider these goals, among others, spelled out in the
initiative:
— Expand selective fisheries to increase opportunities for
recreational and commercial fishing on hatchery fish and reduce the
harvest of wild salmon.
— Implement in-season DNA stock identification to direct
fishing to areas with low impacts on wild salmon.
— Improve fishery monitoring to assure that impacts to wild
fish are accurately assessed.
— Ensure compliance with fishing regulations.
— Monitor numbers of juvenile fish that migrate to marine areas
and adult fish that return to fresh water to spawn to determine
effectiveness of conservation and recovery actions.
— Work with our tribal co-managers in each watershed to develop
joint state/tribal hatchery and harvest management objectives and
plans.
— Coordinate law enforcement with our tribal partners.
As local groups — including the tribes — work hard to remove
barriers to salmon passage and improve habitat in specific streams,
there is a growing recognition that individual streams can support
more salmon than has been possible in the past. Maybe it is time to
test the limits of the habitat for selected streams, understanding
that decreased harvest in the short term could well translate to
greater terminal fisheries in the future.
The Kitsap Sun published an
editorial today about the Tarboo Bay fishery.
I guess we can finally put to rest the question of how thousands
of oysters got washed up high on the beaches of Hood Canal on Aug.
11, causing many to die in the summer sun.
Darrell Hogue of Seabeck
wades into Hood Canal at Scenic Beach State Park to rescue oysters
lodged high on the beach, where an estimated 178,000 were
stranded.
Kitsap Sun photo by Larry Steagall
Without explicitly blaming the USS Port Royal for the problem,
Navy officials said they would take steps to make sure that it
doesn’t happen again. Check out my story from
Wednesday’s Kitsap Sun.
A lot of Hood Canal residents believed the Port Royal was to
blame, because they saw this massive 567-foot guided-missile
cruiser operating at high speeds off their shores. They naturally
connected the ship to the big waves hitting their beaches at the
same time. I tended to believe the local people, but I wasn’t sure
how anyone could actually prove that the Navy was to blame.
Perhaps the best evidence came in a video I first revealed to
you in
Watching Our Water Ways on Aug. 27, thanks to the taping by
Gary Jackson in Dabob Bay.
After this, I tried to get some simple questions answered by the
Navy, but I was frustrated by the fact that three different Navy
groups were playing a role. Each one kept referring me to another,
and it appeared that nobody really wanted to talk about it.
For example, the ship itself belonged to the Third Fleet, so my
questions were directed to a spokesman in San Diego. Because damage
claims were involved, I was directed to a spokesman for the
Admiralty and Maritime Law Division of the Judge Advocate General.
And because the Dabob testing range on Hood Canal is operated by
the Naval Undersea Warfare Center – Keyport, I was directed to a
spokesman for Navy Region Northwest.
After getting the runaround again and again, I asked in late
September if they could talk to each other and tell me where I
should address my questions. They did that and told me that I would
have my questions answered by Third Fleet, where the ship is based.
I went so far as to put my questions in writing so there would be
no confusion. Two weeks later, my questions still were not
answered, so I sent out another e-mail.
This is where I need to give credit to Sean Hughes and the other
public affairs officers for Navy Region Northwest. They have always
been helpful to me, and I think that leaving these questions
unresolved were beginning to trouble them as well. Sean told me
that he was able to take over the questions from Third Fleet and
quickly get answers from local folks running the Dabob range.
I’m guessing that the issue of financial liability for loss of
the oysters was creating a reluctance by Navy officials to discuss
the situation. I can understand that. At the same time, I’m glad
that Sean Hughes and other officials at Navy Region Northwest
appreciate the need to be responsive to the local community where
they operate.
State shellfish biologists are organizing a volunteer work party
to rescue oysters that apparently were washed up high on the beach
at Scenic Beach State Park by a Navy ship.
The guided-missile cruiser
USS Port Royal operates off the coast of Hawaii during Rim of the
Pacific (RIMPAC) in 2008.
U.S. Navy photo
The USS Port
Royal, a 567-foot guided-missile cruiser, was operating in the
Navy’s Dabob Bay testing range on Thursday, and the oysters were
found high up on the private beaches across Hood Canal the next
morning.
Camille Speck, a shellfish biologist with the Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife, inspected the waterfront at Scenic
Beach State Park on Tuesday. She told me that she was surprised at
how far some of the oysters had been moved:
“I have never seen a scour line that high on the beach. The
oysters are alive, but I can tell they have been thrown around a
little bit.”
Frankly, I have never heard of this kind of damage from any
ship, and I don’t blame readers for being skeptical. But there
seems to be no question that the oysters were washed up on the
beach, that the Navy ship was in the vicinity about that time, and
that a ship of this size is capable of producing a huge wake. It’s
called circumstantial evidence, at least until I find someone who
actually saw something happening.
Here are the stories I’ve written on the subject so far:
Several years ago, residents living along Rich Passage between
South Kitsap and Bainbridge Island complained that the wake of
high-speed passenger-only ferries were washing away the gravel and
undercutting their concrete and rock bulkheads. Washington State
Ferries was ultimately forced to pull the ferries out of service.
Local officials are still hoping they can find a ferry that can
make it from Bremerton to Seattle in about half an hour without
creating wake damage.
I’ve also heard complaints from shoreline property owners about
wakes from huge freighters. Such comments have come up during
discussions about revised shoreline regulations that could become
part of Kitsap County’s Shorelines Master Program. Some folks who
live on the east side of the Kitsap Peninsula say wakes from these
massive cargo ships cause more damage to habitat than anything a
shoreline owner might do.
If true, it may be time to address the wake issue, beginning
with studies of actual damage caused when the ships come through.
Do we need government intervention? I can’t say, but rules to
control wakes could be problematic, because the movement of ships
is mostly controlled by the federal government.
