News - Local News

POSTED: Thursday, Sep. 03, 2009

Chinook salmon are moving into improved Nooksack River channel

Chinook salmon are already taking advantage of a new stretch of spawning channel on the north fork of the Nooksack River that was improved in the past year through a project overseen by the Nooksack Indian Tribe.

The fish spawning in the channel are part of the threatened spring stock of chinook that have been the target of restoration efforts for decades.

Tribal habitat biologist Ned Currence said he wasn't expecting to see much activity in the three-quarter-mile stretch of riverbed upstream from Boulder Creek when he visited it just a few days ago. But he was thrilled to see dozens of the big fish pairing up to deposit their eggs in the gravel bottom.

"Last year, no fish spawned in there during the spring chinook period," Currence said. "It was dry."

In recent years, that side channel has held water only during winter floods, too late in the year to help the struggling spring chinook run. But with $370,000 in grants from state and federal sources, tribal biologists and the tribal public works department set about encouraging the river to flow through the channel in late summer. Logjams were anchored in place with steel cable to gently divert the river's flow into the channel, and a bit of excavation work was done to enable the water to flow where it was needed.

Currence's colleague, watershed restoration coordinator Victor Insera, said nobody was sure how long it would take for the fish to take advantage of the new habitat. He was prepared to be patient.

"I view this as almost a 100-year project," Insera said.

But the fish wasted no time. After state fisheries biologists got word that salmon were in the new channel, they arrived to do a survey and found 34 live spawning fish, 32 dead, spawned-out fish, and 31 redds. Redds are the small craters that spawning fish create in gravel beds for deposit of their eggs.

For a salmon run that numbered less than 1,300 returning spawners in the entire North Fork and Middle Fork last year, that's a significant impact.

"We're really pleased," Currence said. "We expected some use, but not this much use. They really keyed in on it."

The chinook weren't the only fish to take notice. Biologists also found a few spawning pink salmon, as well as juvenile steelhead and bulltrout.

Currence said the episode demonstrates the importance of habitat restoration in nursing depleted fish populations back to health. For now, most of the spring chinook that return to the Nooksack and its tributaries were reared at the state's Kendall hatchery.

"There's a lot of habitat work that still needs to happen," Currence said. "The hatchery is helping to maintain the population while we improve the habitat. ... The population of wild fish is slowly building, very modestly, but it is building ... I would say they're in a very slow, gradual improvement pattern but nowhere near out of the woods."

The spring chinook play a starring role in the salmon-fishing tradition of both the Nooksacks and Lummi Nation, as the first fish that return to the river to sustain the tribes each year. Both tribes conduct first-salmon ceremonies as their ancestors did, to honor those fish and ensure their annual return.

The Nooksack Tribe is allotted a harvest of 20 fish for its annual ceremony, while the Lummis harvest 60, Currence said.

"We're basically trying to keep the tradition alive," Currence added.