“Survive
the Sound,” an online game that involves tracking salmon
migrations in Puget Sound, has thrown open its doors for everyone,
whether you donate money or not.
The idea of buying a salmon character to participate in the game
has been abandoned after two years, and now the fish are free for
the choosing. Long Live the Kings, which sponsors the game, still
welcomes donations, of course, but money is not a prerequisite.
“We wanted to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to
learn more about salmon and steelhead and support the movement to
recover them,” Lucas Hall, project manager for LLTK, told me in an
email. “So, we’ve simplified the sign-up process and eliminated any
fees associated with participation.”
“Survive the Sound,” an online game that features cute little
fish swimming for their lives, is back for a second year with some
new additions, including free participation for students and
teachers in the classroom.
The basics of the game remain as I described them last year. You
pick out a wacky cartoon steelhead and then receive daily reports
as the fish makes its way through a perilous Puget Sound over a
12-day period. The journey starts May 7, and signups are now open.
See
Water Ways, April 29, 2017.
As in real life, many fish will not make it to the ocean because
of the effects of disease and pollution along with the constant
risk of predation. But a few lucky steelhead will survive, and the
winners will be recognized.
Individuals join the game with a $25 donation to Long Live the
Kings, which will use the money to further research, ecosystem
restoration and education. This year, anyone can start a team and
encourage others to participate, sharing the joy or heartbreak of
the salmon migration. Prizes
will be awarded to the winning teams.
This year, teachers can sign up their classrooms for free and
play the game while learning about the Puget Sound ecosystem.
Extensive educational materials have been developed to go along
with the game. Check out “Bring ‘Survive the
Sound’ to your Classroom!”
The game is based on the real-life travels of steelhead, which
have been tracked using implanted acoustic transmitters. Some fish
swim faster than others and some even reverse course. This year,
participants will be able to watch the progress of all of the fish
making the journey, according to Michael Schmidt of Long Live the
Kings.
Last year, more than 1,100 people joined the game, and
organizers hope for even greater participation this year.
If nothing else, you should check out the cartoon fish and the
clever things they have to say by clicking on the individual
steelhead in the “Survive the
Sound” fish list.
In a new game open to everyone, 48 colorful cartoon fish will
soon follow the wandering paths of real-life steelhead that have
been tracked during their migration through Puget Sound.
Just like their counterparts in the real world, some of the
young steelhead in the game will survive the trip from South Puget
Sound or southern Hood Canal — but many will not. The game’s basic
tenet is to choose a fish that you feel will be lucky or cunning
enough to make it through a gauntlet of hazards from predators to
disease. You then watch and learn about the needs and threats to
salmon and steelhead as the game progresses over 12 days, beginning
May 8.
I was saddened to hear of the death of Larry Rutter, senior
policy assistant in the Sustainable Fisheries Division at the
National Marine Fisheries Service and a U.S. commissioner on the
Pacific Salmon Commission.
Larry
Rutter
Larry, 61, was one of the folks who taught me the basics of
salmon management more than 20 years ago. He kept me informed
through some difficult negotiations over salmon harvest allocations
between the U.S. and Canadian governments.
Technically, he was very sharp. Personally, he was patient and
kind.
I am pleased that Long Live the Kings has created a Larry Rutter
Legacy Fund to carry out his wish for remembrances connected to the
Salish Sea Marine Survival Project, an effort he helped coordinate
across the border between LLTK and the Pacific Salmon Foundation in
Canada.
“It was due in no small part to Larry’s influence that LLTK and
PSF were awarded a $5-million grant from the Pacific Salmon
Commission’s Southern Fund Committee in 2013 for the Salish Sea
Marine Survival Project,” said LLTK Executive Director Jacques
White in a
statement. “Without his vision and dedication, we simply would
not be where we are today.”
To donate to the Larry Rutter Legacy Fund, scroll to the bottom
of the Long
Live the Kings page on the topic.
Larry was a graduate of South Kitsap High School and the
University of Washington. He worked for the Point No Point Treaty
Council and Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission before taking the
job with NMFS (NOAA Fisheries). His obituary in
The Olympian says Larry died last Thursday of pancreatic
cancer.
Long Live the Kings is holding two events that will give people
some special insight into the restoration of Hood Canal, and
possibly Puget Sound as a whole.
The first, tomorrow evening, begins with a free film that will
lead into a discussion about Hood Canal restoration. The second, on
Saturday, is a rare open house at LLK’s salmon and steelhead
hatchery on Lilliwaup Creek.
Jacque White, executive director of the group, told me that he
likes to show the film “Ocean
Frontiers” because it provides a hopeful view about protecting
marine ecosystems. It shows how a variety of people with diverse
interests can work together. I’ve embedded the trailer for the film
on this page.
Jacques said people clearly want to protect the rich ecosystem
of Hood Canal. The Hood Canal Coordinating Council has developed an
integrated watershed plan that connects the uplands to the
shoreline to the deep marine waters of the canal.
Joining him in a panel discussion after the film will be Dave
Herrera of the Skokomish Tribe and Terry King of Washington Sea
Grant.
The film and discussion will be tomorrow (Friday) from 6 to 8
p.m. at Alderbrook Resort and Spa in Union.
The open house on Saturday will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the
Lilliwaup Hatchery on Lilliwaup Street, off Highway 101 north of
Hoodsport. (Look for balloons along the highway near
Lilliwaup.)
The hatchery is a supplementation operation designed to restore
stocks of threatened Hood Canal summer chum, Puget Sound steelhead
and Puget Sound chinook. The event will be an opportunity to view
the hatchery and understand the supplementation program, but it is
also a chance to talk to people involved in numerous Hood Canal
restoration programs.
“The issues in Hood Canal are about the land-sea connection,”
White said, adding that he feels hope for the canal when people are
willing to learn about the ecosystem and attempt to understand
different viewpoints.
Two other events planned by Long Live the Kings:
A presentation by Jacque White with an emphasis on early marine
survival. See
“Water Ways” Aug. 22, 2013. The presentation will be Sept. 12
from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Orcas Center on Orcas Island.
A benefit dinner for Long Live the Kings, Oct 17 at Seattle
Aquarium.
A new research program, announced yesterday, will work to
untangle the mystery of what is killing young salmon after they
leave their natal streams. The program is being coordinated in both
Washington state and British Columbia — by Long Live the Kings on
the U.S. side and by Pacific Salmon Foundation in Canada. See
today’s
Kitsap Sun (subscription required).
At high tide, water now
covers what had been a farmer’s field for decades on the Union
River estuary near Belfair. On Monday, an old farm dike was
breached in two places. Estuaries are considered important for
salmon survival. / Photo by Steve
Zugschwerdt
I have conducted hundreds of interviews about salmon through the
years. Biologists can usually explain what makes a good salmon
stream: clean water, sufficient gravel, vegetation to provide food,
woody debris to provide protection and so on.
What they cannot explain very well is what young salmon need to
survive in saltwater. Is it clean water, as in freshwater
environments? Is it a particular kind of plankton for food, or
maybe natural shorelines to provide protection during migration? Is
the increased marine mortality of salmon the result of disease or
predators? All may be factors, but which ones really count?
When asked to explain why salmon runs are coming in larger or
smaller than predicted, salmon managers typically fall back to two
words: “ocean conditions.” Conditions may be good or bad in a given
year, but what makes good or bad conditions cannot be answered very
well.
Biologists who predict salmon runs talk about the “black box”
that salmon swim into when they leave the streams and swim back out
of when they return. It’s a way of saying that the computer models
used to predict salmon runs have a blind spot when it comes to the
deep, dark ocean — which we now believe includes the estuary at the
edge of the stream, where the salmon change from being a freshwater
fish to being a saltwater fish.
“What is currently recognized as a black box appears to be a
black hole for salmon recovery,” Jacques White, executive director
of Long Live the Kings, told me yesterday in an interview. “If we
don’t know what is going on, we can’t make decisions for salmon
recovery. It makes it difficult to manage the stocks coming
back.”
That’s where the cross-border research program comes in, and
it’s no wonder that salmon biologists are excited about the
prospect of breaking into the black box. It won’t be easy to track
the tiny fish after they leave the streams or to figure out where
things are going wrong, but new technology will help. The project
is proposed for $10 million in the U.S., with an equal amount in
Canada.
Review the Long Live the Kings website for other information
about the
Salish Sea Marine Survival Project. To go deeper into the ideas
behind the project, download the proceedings, notes and other
information from November’s Salish Sea
Workshop Series.
Meanwhile, efforts to improve estuarine and shoreline conditions
will continue, using natural conditions as a guide. On Monday, I
covered the final step in the Union River estuary restoration,
which involved breaching an old farm dike in two places. I watched
as the waters of Hood Canal, held back for a century, began to
reclaim 32 acres of saltwater march. Check out the story and video
in the
Kitsap Sun (subscription required).
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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.
Sean Hildebrant of Hood
Canal Salmon Enhancement Group shoots 2-year-old steelhead into the
Dewatto River.
Photo by Steve Zugschwerdt for the Kitsap
Sun
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:
