News - Local News

POSTED: Monday, Jul. 14, 2008

Native paddlers pull devices to monitor water quality

Coast Salish people aid USGS efforts

For centuries, the traditional canoes of the Coast Salish community of tribes have plied the inland waters of Washington state and British Columbia carrying trading goods, raiding parties and families headed to summer potlatch celebrations.

But for several weeks this summer, some of the 100 canoes headed to Vancouver Island for an annual gathering will be trailing sophisticated water-monitoring equipment provided by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Every 10 seconds, the $20,000 apiece probes will test the water for temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen levels, pH and turbidity. Sophisticated GPS systems will track where each sample was taken and the results will be posted daily on the Web site usgs .gov/coastsalish.

It’s a marriage of 21st century technology with an ancient way of life. The idea is to get a snapshot of the health of the waters known for generations as the Salish Sea. For the Salish people, it’s about restoring their nearly sacred waters.

“It’s about who we are,” said Eric Day, a member of the Swinomish Tribe near LaConner. “These are our highways. We still have people making a living on the water. There are reports of dead zones out there. Fish runs are declining. We need to know what is going on and how to fix it.”

Day is captain of a Swinomish canoe family and will be paddling a canoe through the San Juan Islands on its way north to Duncan, B.C. His will be one of the canoes equipped with a monitoring probe. The nine people aboard his “Spirit of the Salmon” canoe, ranging in age from 11 to nearly 50, will be paddling six to 12 hours a day on their weeklong journey.

“We are honoring the way our people used to travel,” said Day, who has been involved in the annual canoe journeys since they were revived in 1989 in the wake of a major court decision restoring fishing rights to many of the tribes in Western Washington.

Lummi Nation hosted last year’s canoe journey.

The Coast Salish includes 28 tribes in Washington state, ranging from the Squaxin, Nisqually and Puyallup in the South Sound to the Swinomish, Tulalip and Lummi in the North. The Salish also include 48 First Nations in British Columbia.

They share a common culture, a language with common roots and similar traditions. Where their waters are now called Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Strait of Georgia, in ancestral times it was known as the Salish Sea.

Nearly every tribe will have at least one canoe involved in this year’s journey. The canoes will travel along six traditional Salish routes. In addition to the Swinomish, a canoe from the Squaxin Tribe near Shelton, Wash., will trail the monitoring equipment, along with canoes from two British Columbia tribes.

“This is a unique opportunity to collect some very valuable data,” said Eric Grossman, a USGS research geologist based in Santa Barbara, Calif., who has long studied the estuaries of Puget Sound and is an advisor to the Salish project.

Water quality throughout Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia has deteriorated significantly in recent years and threatens near-shore and marine habitats, Grossman said.

Slow-moving canoes are an excellent way to monitor the near-shore waters that are often too shallow for other research vessels. In addition, powered boats stir up the water and can add small amounts of toxins that can interfere with the water sampling.

The water sampling equipment is contained in an 18-inchlong cylinder. At five pounds, it weighs a third as much as the water-sampling probe pulled behind a canoe during a similar tribal event last year on the Yukon River.

Grossman said the idea for the Coastal Salish project had been kicked around for several years, but jelled when the probes became smaller and more sophisticated.

“They’ll put it in in the morning and pull it out at night,” said Sarah Aiken, a water resource specialist with the Swinomish. The Swinomish are the lead tribe on the canoe journey project, and Aiken is its coordinator.

Aiken said the data this year will provide a baseline that can be compared with data gathered in subsequent years of sampling from the canoes. The probes are so light, Aiken said, the paddlers won’t feel any drag.

“This is different than most sampling programs,” she said. “Other agencies come out once a month, once a quarter or once a year and take their samples in only a few places. This will help us fill in a lot of gaps.”

Day said coupling the water sampling with the canoe journey was a natural fit.

“Every time I’ve gone out, I sit there and think there was something else we needed to do,” he said. “We are honoring the ways of our people and trying to do something about a problem that threatens our way of life.”

Les Blumenthal covers issues about Washington state from the McClatchy Washington, D.C., bureau. He can be reached at lblumenthal@mcclatchydc.com.