Fishes
Eulachon
The eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus) is an important food source for many marine fish, birds and mammals throughout the Salish Sea. Historically it has been an important food source for many Native American tribes.
In March of 2010 the NOAA announced it will list the eulachon as Threatened under the US Endangered Species Act. This fish is also called the candlefish because it is packed with so many calories you can light a dried one like a candle.
For more information about the listing, download this pdf from NOAA, this question and answer pdf on the decision to list as Threatened, or visit the Eulachon page at the northwest office of NOAA Fisheries.
For another take, visit http://qmackie.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/vanishing-eulachon/.
Read about other species of concern in the Salish Sea.
We'd hoped to find a video of someone lighting a eulachon on fire, but couldn't...
(Photo shows an Alaskan eulachon. Photo by David Beatley, US Forest Service.)
Fishes of the Salish Sea
How many fish species use the Salish Sea? In which habitat types can you find certain species?
Knowing the answers to questions as basic as this are fundamental to restoring an ecosystem. Yet currently we don’t have a scientific list of the fish species of the Salish Sea. This also was true for the birds and mammals of the Salish Sea until SeaDoc recently published that list. But stay tuned, we will soon also have a list of fishes thanks to a very generous private donation.
Why is this so important? With this list, scientists will be able to document the occurrence of new species and the disappearance of existing ones. The list will be a key baseline for Salish Sea recovery. At the same time it will help scientists select particular species as indicators of ecosystem health, and it will provide a basis for identifying the mechanisms responsible for marine fish declines.
Not too bad for a humble list. Thanks to our forward-thinking donor for understanding the importance of this effort and making it possible.
Photo: Grunt Sculpin by J. Nichols
River Otter Diet and Predation Project
In 2012, SeaDoc is funding a River Otter diet and predation study by Monique Lance of the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife.
The study aims to describe the diet of river otters and investigate the potential effect they have on rockfish and salmon populations in the San Juan Islands.
Rockfish and salmon are currently listed under the Federal Endangered Species Act. Because of the dramatic decline in these species over the past several decades, Marine Protected Areas have been created to assist in their recovery.
However, little attention has been paid to how predators respond to increased prey densities. Therefore it's important to investigate the diet of potential predators.
Otter scat samples were collected in the spring, summer and fall of 2008 on Fidalgo, San Juan and Orcas Islands. The scat samples have been cleaned and invertebrates in them have been identified. The project now allows for the analysis of fish remains in the scat, as well as examinations of spatial variation among the project sites and temporal variations through 2008. Data will also be compared to diet data from Alaska and British Columbia. The project will also compare diet among various predators, including harbor seals and Steller sea lions.
Photo by Michael Ransburg: Creative Commons license.
July 2011 SeaDoc Monthly Update
July 2011 SeaDoc Society Update
Last Chance! Our Annual Auction is Saturday Night
Image: Western grebes doing their mating dance. Created by Dwight Duke using his controlled gunpowder process and part of our our live auction.
SeaDoc's annual Wine 'n' Sea Auction is this Saturday at 5pm on Orcas Island.
The RSVP deadline was Saturday, but if for some reason you've just now heard about it or you haven't gotten around to reserving a spot, you're in luck. We've still got a handful of spots left.
Tickets are $150 per person. The food is going to be wonderful, and as you know the money goes towards making the Salish Sea a better place.
We have over 100 items up for auction, including a trip for two to the Galapagos and our usual selection of special and hard-to-find wines, one of which is a 2007 Clos St Jean Chateauneuf du Pape Deus Ex Machina, which wine reviewer Robert Parker says is the single greatest red wine he has ever had (100 point score and extremely rare stuff).
Get in touch right away to reserve your spot. Call 360-376-3910 or send an email to Jean at jmspalti@ucdavis.edu.
Can't attend but want to help us make this our best year ever? Make a donation in lieu of attending and we'll count it in our auction total. Click here to donate.
Rockfish Recovery Workshop Recap
Last week, SeaDoc co-hosted a Rockfish Recovery Workshop in Seattle with the State Department of Wildlife and NOAA Fisheries.
Nearly 100 scientists, fisheries managers, fishers and SCUBA divers attended the 2-day workshop to discuss the current state of knowledge on rockfish and to identify future needs related to recovering depleted rockfish populations in the Salish Sea.
Two of the highlights were SeaDoc researcher Gary Greene presenting his seafloor habitat maps of the San Juan Islands region that help identify the location of rockfish habitat and SeaDoc board member Kit Rawson's presentation on the history of coequal management of Puget Sound fisheries by Washington State and the Treaty Tribes of Washington.
There are 28 species of rockfish in the Salish Sea. Thirteen are listed as species of concern and recently 3 species were listed under the US Endangered Species Act.
In addition to helping organize the workshop, SeaDoc also helped bring in Canadians to share their perspective on what has and has not worked with rockfish recovery on the other side of the border.
A lot of the research SeaDoc funded over the last 10 years was presented and plans were laid for moving rockfish recovery forward. The meeting proceedings will be published soon and will be available on the SeaDoc website.
For a more in-depth recap, click through to the SeaDoc blog.
Fluff, Flight & Fancy: Thor Hansen's New Book
For the last 6 months Dr. Thor Hansen has been working for SeaDoc to write a status review for Tufted Puffins in Washington State. He's also been busy on other fronts and has recently published a new book, Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle.
It's been getting rave reviews. Our in-house book expert, Jean Spalti, says, "I highly recommend it. An engaging and often hilarious read."
The Economist writes,
"Thor Hanson's new book takes on the intriguing subject of feathers. With infectious enthusiasm, he describes them, from their earliest known incarnations to their place in the modern world.
"He starts at their beginning with a weighty introduction that looks at fossils dating back to the dinosaurs, the structure of feathers and the evolution of birds. From there on, the remaining chapters are captivating natural history, arranged in neatly named sections: "fluff", how feathers keep birds warm and dry; "flight", how they take to the sky; "fancy", the myriad beauty of feathers for sexual selection in birds and decoration for humans; and "function", how feather structure can inform new technologies.
"Thor ends with a plea to protect endangered species and threatened ecosystems. Though he accepts that all feather fanatics and readers will not be "die-hard birders" like himself, he urges them at least to be bird advocates so that future generations can admire and learn from the species. It is difficult to disagree."
2011 Summer Interns
Ashley Briese and Greg Bishop, both 3rd year veterinary students are SeaDoc's summer interns for 2011. Ashley is at Oregon State University and Greg is at UC Davis.
Their primary responsibility is to help SeaDoc and the Whale Museum coordinate response to marine mammal strandings in San Juan County, but they've also got their hands in a lot of other projects. Ashley is analyzing years of marine mammal parasite data collected from years of stranded marine mammals, and Greg is working to try to tag 100% of the harbor seal pups that strand.
And in the department of hidden talents, we've recently discovered that Greg has starred in spoof music videos as part of the UC Davis VetMed hip hop group, "Wet Lab." We've put Greg in charge of the Summer 2011 SeaDoc office rap video. Watch for it...
SeaDoc in the News
Joe Gaydos was quoted in the June issue of Canadian Geographic magazine.
The issue was devoted to "Protecting Our Water." Joe provided background information on the naming of the Salish Sea and the importance of cross-border collaboration.
From the article: "Having one name makes people feel united," says Joe Gaydos, chief scientist for the SeaDoc Society, a non-profit marine science group that has used the name for several years and facilitates scientific collaborations and information sharing in the region.
Read the article here.
On this side of the border, the Seattle Times picked up our recent Wildlife Post on the comprehensive list of birds and mammals that use the Salish Sea for their Field Notes northwest nature blog.
"If you want to restore an ecosystem, it's really important to know what is there, or what has been there historically," said Joe Gaydos, SeaDoc's Orcas Island-based regional director.
Science writer Sandi Doughton brought in great examples like the connection between intertidal beavers and juvenile salmon, and she gave SeaDoc a great plug at the end of the article.
Read the post here.
Upcoming Events
The Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference (formerly the Puget Sound/Georgia Basin Research Conference) is on October 25-27 in Vancouver. It's the largest and most comprehensive scientific research and policy conference in the region. SeaDoc has frequently presented at the conference, and we are a Bronze Sponsor this year. More information.
Like this update? Much of SeaDoc's work--including our communications and outreach efforts--is supported by private donations from people like you. Please consider making a donation.
2011 Rockfish Recovery Workshop recap
This past week (June 28 & 29, 2011) SeaDoc co-hosted a Rockfish Recovery Workshop in Seattle with the State Department of Wildlife and NOAA Fisheries.
Nearly 100 scientists, fisheries managers, fishers and SCUBA divers attended the 2-day workshop to discuss the current state of knowledge on rockfish and to identify future needs related to recovering depleted rockfish populations in the Salish Sea.
There are 28 species of rockfish in the Salish Sea. Thirteen (13) are listed as species of concern and recently 3 species were listed under the US Endangered Species Act.
In addition to helping organize the workshop, SeaDoc also helped bring in Canadians to share their perspective on what has and has not worked with rockfish recovery on the other side of the border.
A lot of the research SeaDoc funded over the last 10 years was presented and plans were laid for moving rockfish recovery forward. The meeting proceedings will be published soon and will be available here on the SeaDoc website.
In the meantime, here's a recap:
(Please note that this summary is taken from my notes and if there are errors or misstatements they are mine, not the researchers/presenters! -Joe T.)
Historical Context Session
Wayne Palsson spoke on the biology and assessment of rockfishes in Puget Sound. Rockfishes are a diverse group of species with different life histories. They require various habitat during different life stages. They are adapted for slow growth, long survival, late maturity, low natural mortality rates, and high habitat fidelity. These are all factors that make recovery tough. There's a lack of long-term data that makes it hard to create conventional age-structure population models and biomass dynamic models.
Chris Harvey reviewed the ecological history of rockfish exploitation in Puget Sound. Rockfish bones have been found in middens dating back 1,500 years. Much of the fishing pressure on rockfish began after the Boldt decision in 1974, which required that harvests in Puget Sound be coequally managed by the State government and the Treaty Tribes of Washington. It's also been influenced by demographic trends and by the promotion of the fishery by State government. (Unfortunately, as covered in Wayne Palsson's talk, it wasn't until 1982 that scientists learned that rockfish were generally 2 to 3 times longer lived than they'd thought, which meant the existing population models were not accurate.) By the time management efforts were deemed necessary, the greatest harvests had already occurred.
Anne Beaudreau discussed her work to reconstruct historical trends in rockfish abundance. The lack of data on historical populations of rockfish is a major barrier to developing sustainable fisheries. Beaudreau and colleagues interviewed 101 individuals ranging in age from 24 to 90 years to try to derive trends in the abundance of rockfish from 1940 to the present. Of particular interest was the evidence of "shifting baselines." To a statistically significant degree, each age group of respondents interpreted the conditions at the beginning of their awareness as "abundant" and saw declines from there, but what was "declining" to an older person was "abundant" to a younger person.
Benthic Habitat Surveys/Rockfish Abundance Estimates Session
Gary Greene presented the Salish Sea sea floor mapping project, which has produced bathymetric and habitat maps of the San Juan Islands area. Rockfish prefer particular habitat types, and the multibeam echosounders used by Greene and his colleagues allows these potential habitat areas to be identified. (Other participants were very interested in having these maps for other areas in the Salish Sea.
Bob Pacunski spoke on work to use non-lethal methods to survey rockfish populations. Traditional trawl or long-line sampling results in fish mortality, but using a small remotely-operated vehicle has been shown to be effective at providing population surveys.
Stressors Session
Joan Drinkwin of the Northwest Straits Foundation spoke on the threat posed to rockfish by derelict fishing gear, including both nets and traps. The Northwest Straits Initiative has removed 3,860 nets from Puget Sound, all at less than 105 feet deep. There are 950 shallow-water nets still in the water, and at least 70 in deeper water. Based on studies of net mortality by the SeaDoc Society, approximately 1,600 rockfish per year are captured and killed in derelict nets each year in the United States portion of the Salish Sea.
...More coming soon...
Elwha Dam Removal
Joe Gaydos serves as a governor appointed Commissioner and science and technical advisor to the Northwest Straits Commission.
He shared this from the Northwest Straits Commission meeting on May 20, 2011:
At the meeting today, we heard a great presentation by Dean Butterworth of the National Park Service on the removal of the Elwha Dams, scheduled to begin this September.
This will be a major national and international event.
The three main reasons for removing the Elwha Dam and Glines Canyon Dams from the Elwha river are:
- To benefit salmon and sea-run trout; both dams were built without provision for fish passage and you can still see salmon pooling below the dams, blocked from spawning.
All 5 salmon species as well as 3 species of anadromous trout (steelhead, bull trout and cutthroat) used to inhabit and/or spawn in the Elwha river.
Before the dams, fish could access over 70 miles of streams and freshwater. Since the dams, only the lower 5 miles of the river remain for spawning.
Note: in addition to benefitting salmon and trout, allowing these fishes to re-inhabit 65 miles of freshwater will benefit the riparian habitat as well as over 130 species of animals.
- Dams also block the movement of sediment from the river from moving into the Strait of Juan de Fuca (about 18-20 million yards of sediment are thought to exist trapped behind the dams).
- A giant push by the Lower Elwha-Klallam tribe for full restoration of the Elwha River ecosystem.
To date, there have been numerous studies to direct the removal of the dams as well as on-the-ground work to help open up an area where there will eventually be another delta at the mouth of the Elwha river.
As September draws near and for the next several years in the future, this huge ecosystem restoration story will be talked about all over the country and the world. We'll keep you posted with updates.
Don't miss these two very cool animated visualizations of the removal of each dam.
Note: Some images are static, others are animated. Click on the image to start or advance the slideshow.
More info at http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/elwha-faq.htm
Rockfish Workshop: June 2011
The SeaDoc Society is helping to organize an important workshop on Rockfish Recovery in the Salish Sea: Research and Management Priorities.
The workshop takes place on June 28 & 29, 2011 at the National Marine Fisheries Service Regional Office on Sand Point Way in Seattle. Attendance is free, but pre-registration is required.
Sand Lance video
Here's a video about sand lance spawning by Mark Plumberg of 5th Life Productions. As we mentioned in our recap of the forage fish needs assessment workshop, we know relatively little about the life cycle of sand lance and other forage fish. This video shows the spawning process in action. 16 minutes, but you don't have to watch all of it to see how cool these fish are.
Video (on YouTube)
Who's Your Big Mother?
Many of us made New Year's resolutions to lose weight. And those of us of a certain age bemoan the fact that humans hit our biological primes well before middle age.
But did you know that it's much different for fish? Take, for example, our own rockfish. Nearly 30 species of rockfish live in the Salish Sea, and some of them don't become sexually mature until they're 20 years old – that's two decades of avoiding hungry mouths, baited hooks and nets until they can even begin to breed. Once they do, though, the female rockfish gives birth to live young and we believe she continues to reproduce her entire life span, which for some species can be more than 100 years!
Beaver & Salmon Lecture Recap
On February 8 SeaDoc hosted Greg Hood from the Skagit River System Cooperative for a talk on Beaver, Salmon, and restoration of tidal habitat. We recorded audio and video of this event: see below for links.
