Darren Blaney is a former chief of the Homalco First Nation, the northern-most of the Salish Sea tribes, near Campbell River, B.C. Photo by Liam Moriarty

The northern tip of the Salish Sea is the place where the Campbell River on Vancouver Island empties into Georgia Strait.

This week we wrap up our series “Reflections on the Water,” as KPLU environment reporter Liam Moriarty talks with Darren Blaney, a wood carver and former chief of the Homalco First Nation, which is based in Campbell River.

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Liam Moriarty: We’re standing near the mouth of the Campbell River as it empties out into Georgia Strait … (bird call) Kingfisher there …You started to tell me a story about that tall mountain off in the distance.

Darren Blaney: Yeah; in our language, that mountain is called Potham. It means the shoots that are coming out of the ground in spring. That mountain has a bit of a bump on there, so it looks like the shoots so that’s what it reminded our people of. That’s where our people landed during the flood.

Liam: Are we talking about the biblical flood?

Darren: There are many communities along the coast that have a flood story, so yeah; it’s fairly common in the First Nations along the coast here in B.C.

Liam: The Homalco are the northern-most of the Salish Tribes here on the Salish Sea?

Darren: Yes; we’re the northern most. We have Quagueth that are our neighbors; they migrated into this area, when the fur trade was going on in the 1800s.

Liam: Another aspect of Salish Sea native culture are the canoes. You were recently on a – paddled a canoe over to the mainland. In  Vancouver; tell me about that.

Darren: We joined up with the flotilla that was coming down from Hope. They were gathering in Vancouver to send a message to the Cohen Commission that’s investigating the state of the sockeye stocks last year when hardly any sockeye returned. There’s a commission that was set up …

Liam: To try to figure out where did all the fish go last year.

Darren: Hmm hmm. So we paddled over from Victoria in our canoe.

Liam: I’ve never been in one of those canoes. They look like amazing craft. I’ve done a lot of kayaking but that’s a one-person or a two- person craft. You’ve got a whole crew that paddles a canoe.

Looking southeast across Georgia Strait, from a beach near Campbell River, past the south tip of Quadra Island, toward the Candian Coast Range. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Estero Peak (5459 feet/1664 meters) lies north of Campbell River, B.C. The mountain figures prominently in the Homalco creation story. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Darren: Yeah; some of them get pretty big. Some get up to 40, 50 feet. Ours is a 32-foot canoe, and was built by our relatives from Squamish. A lot of work went into it. It will hold seven, fairly comfortably. That’s what we paddled with when we went across. There was a big storm that came on when we were crossing, about 4-foot waves we were riding in our canoe. It was a pretty good test for the canoe and I think it did well.

Liam: But how ‘bout you guys; how do those craft handle in heavy weather like that?

Darren Blaney explains this photo from his family archives: "This long canoe was being carved by my great grandfather Johnny Blaney around 1935, for King George's visit to Vancouver. My grandfather Henry Blaney is standing by the canoe in front of our church while some are by the church with paddles and kids on the top of the porch and stairs." (Courtesy of Darren Blaney)

Darren: It did pretty good. It handled the waves well, we rode the waves well.  Some of them, you have to meet them head on when they’re big waves but other than that sometimes you have to paddle pretty hard in order to keep yourself fairly stable, otherwise it can get pretty wobbly, if you’re going sideways on the waves. You have to paddle pretty hard to stay upright.

Liam: Can you talk about the place that the salmon had in your peoples’ history?

Darren: Our people relied on the salmon so heavily. There is a story of these kids that were told to bring all the bones –you’re supposed to bring all the bones back into the water – and it sort of keeps that cycle going, the salmon returning. One of the young boys in the story didn’t return all the bones. When he returned from the river, part of his face was missing.

The elders looked into it and realized he hadn’t returned all the bones. They found that bone and then they returned it, and once he returned it, he was whole again. His face was back again. To me it just says that if something happens to the salmon, it happens to us.

Liam: With that in mind, you’ve got a lot of concerns about the proliferation of open net salmon farming here. There’s a lot of that up here in Georgia Strait, in B.C. What are your concerns about that?

Darren: We’ve been doing some testing, I guess on the most obvious which is the sea lice issue.

Liam: Let’s first explain a little bit; what are sea lice? They’re a parasite on the salmon?

A marker in Campbell River denotes 50 degrees of north latitude, the northern edge of the Salish Sea. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Darren: Yeah; they’re a parasite on the salmon and they come on salmon naturally. When there are wild salmon going by, they might have a few sea lice on them and that’s really harmless at that point, but when you get a million salmon in an open net cage, then they tend to multiply. And because of the sea lice, they put a lot of chemicals into the feed of the salmon, and that gets into our ecosystem. We believe it’s a big part of the disappearance of the salmon stocks.

Liam: Darren, thanks for having me out today. It’s gorgeous out here, and we managed to catch it while there was still some sun.

Darren: Thank you for letting me share our concerns and our history of the Salish Sea. Y’know, all my relations are along the sea, the Salish Sea.

More information:

• Homalco First Nation
• A 2005 article about the Homalco’s fight against a salmon farm in their home waters
• Tribal canoe website

Ken Kirkby heads the Nile Creek Enhancement Society in Bowser, B.C., on the east side of Vancouver Island. Photo by Liam Moriarty.

Human activity has taken a heavy toll on the Salish Sea. And efforts are underway across the region to restore depleted stocks of everything from salmon to eelgrass.

This week KPLU environment reporter Liam Moriarty visits a project in the little town of Bowser, British Columbia. He sits on a beach with Ken Kirkby, who heads an innovative community non-profit that’s been restoring a crucial type of habitat: underwater forests of bull kelp.

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Liam Moriarty: We’re looking east across Georgia Strait. What are those islands that we’re looking at a little bit to the north, Ken?

Ken Kirkby: The island directly to our northwest is Denman. Then there’s a channel and the next island is Hornby.

Bowser, B.C.

Liam: Now, you came to Bowser quite some years ago.

Ken: I come from one of those ancient families, 1,100 years of mayhem in Europe. I was never comfy there. Didn’t want to be part of it. Wanted to have a new life, my own life. So in September ’58, I managed to make my way to Vancouver with a map of how to get to the village of Bowser, and I fell in love with this place. I’d never seen a real true forest. I’d never seen giant kelp beds. I’d never seen salmon. But then I left after two weeks, promising that I would one day live here.

Liam: So after many years, you came back to Bowser, and things had changed a lot.

Ken: I found the great abundance was gone. The river was void of fish. The kelp beds were gone. The eelgrass was almost gone. So we decided to actually grow kelp.

Liam: Why are the kelp beds important?

Ken: What happens with kelp is that, it’s a primordial thing. It actually bleeds itself perpetually into the ocean, putting all manner of nutrients in that feed the tiny, tiny organisms on which other, larger creatures depend. When the small salmon leave the river, they need a place to go and be while they’re acclimatizing themselves to get on the long journey. Likewise when those larger adult salmon are on their way home, they also need a place to hide out.

Liam: How do you re-establish kelp forests? You can’t just replant them the way you would trees or whatever; how do you do that?

Ken: In large part, as all nature, it’s a numbers game. If we could get enough spores in the ocean and let them travel on the currents, and find substrates that are suitable

Liam: That they could attach to on the bottom.

Ken: Precisely. Our first attempts were as rudimentary as you could possibly get. Imagine onion bags; you put a rock in it, take a piece of spore patch, put it in there, and toss it overboard.

Liam: Let her rip.

Ken: Yeah; and keep doing it. You cannot get simpler than that.

Liam: How did that work out?

Kelp beds often form mats on the surface. The air-filled bulb floats leaf-like blades near the surface to get sunlight, while a "holdfast" anchors the algae to solid surfaces on the sea floor. (photo credit: echoforsberg/Flickr)

Ken: We were blown away in that there was kelp. Now, we found out there was a concrete block maker, cinderblocks, north of us here. In the making of those, there are a lot of duds. Those duds cannot be used for construction and they have to be crushed and disposed of. That costs a lot of money. So we cut a deal with him; if we take them away, can we have them? He said any day you want. We chose these blocks that had been weathered for five years, and we ferried out in front here.

Liam: Out where those buoys are right now?

Ken: Exactly. Right out there. We started building small reefs. And sure enough, the kelp immediately started to grow. We planted some there with divers Then it did re-seed itself.

Liam: Now that you’ve been establishing these new kelp beds that seem to be self-sustaining, are they developing the kinds of colonies of critters that you would expect in a naturally spawning bed?

Ken: When divers went down and we took a look, we couldn’t believe it. In a five month, up to eight month period, the kelp beds that are out in front here were fully populated with five varieties of rock cod; ling cod, kelplings, greenlings, octopus – we’ve got 42 octopus living out here now. We know each one now.

Liam: Have you given them names yet?

Ken: No, no; they said look, this human need to give names to things, can you back off on that one? (laughter) We have squid; lots and lots of herring back. And we’re trying to convince folks to leave this area alone and let the kelp and the herring and all the other things work together, and give it a chance. Let’s give this a ten year window. We can get a really good picture in ten years of how this affects everything. And we’re making progress. We’ve gone to a number of the fisherman who come here, the fishers; we’ve sat them down, human, face to face, and explained to them what we’re doing, include them in it, and ask for their support, and it’s amazing what happens.

Liam: It sounds like that was actually helping to cultivate relationships in the human community here, too.

Winter storms wash masses of bull kelp onto the shore. (photo credit: Ed Bierman/Flickr)

Ken: It has actually made a community. An old fashioned kind of community. People who before probably didn’t even know each other, some who did and didn’t like each other, have been asked to leave their political guns at the door. It’s created a major sense of well being. The greatest beneficiary of this, quite frankly, is the human factor.

Liam: Ken, thanks for taking me out and showing me what you’ve got. This is a beautiful place and you’re doing very interesting things.

Ken: Thanks for being interested, and thanks for coming all this way.

More information:

• Nile Creek Enhancement Society
• Bull Kelp Fact Sheet
• Recipe for Pickled Bull Kelp

Sheila Malcolmson stands on the shoreline near her home on Gabriola Island, in the Gulf Islands east of Nanaimo. Photo by Liam Moriarty

There are more than a thousand islands in the Salish Sea. Some of them are home to good-sized towns, others are inhabited only by wildlife. Either way, the island experience is one of the signatures of this region.

This week in our series “Reflections on the Water,” KPLU environment reporter Liam Moriarty takes a ferry to Gabriola Island, in British Columbia, population about 4,000. He talks with Sheila Malcolmson about the joys and challenges of island living.

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Liam Moriarty: It’s a rainy, misty, November Salish Sea sort of day. I’m on Gabriola Island in a very cozy little house on the shoreline with the fire going and I’m sitting here with Sheila Malcolmson.

How you doing, Sheila?

Sheila Malcomson: Really good, Liam.

Liam: What’s the community like up here?

The B.C. ferry is a vital link between Gabriola Island and the much larger Vancouver Island. Gabiola Islanders call Vancouver Island "the mainland." Vancouver Islanders don't. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Sheila: It’s a real mix. You can actually look at the cars at the ferry line-up and get a pretty good sense of where we’re from. There’s lots of people on bikes and scooters. You’ve got trades coming back and forth, and really high end, really expensive cars, and lots of beat up rusted out Subarus with kayaks on the roof.

Liam: I lived on Orcas Island for 16 years from the mid-80s until 2002 or so, and island communities are different, even different from other small rural communities. How does that play out in the composition of your community on Gabriola?

Sheila: I guess people need to make a commitment to get here. They have to choose a certain amount of both isolation from the mainland and also lack of privacy or anonymity.

Liam: One thing I noticed when I moved to Orcas was that if you make an enemy of somebody, you’re going to see them at the post office, you’re going to see them at the grocery store, you’re going to see them at the community center. That creates an imperative where you kind of have to nurture your relationships more carefully than you might in a larger, more anonymous place.

Sheila: No question. People are passionate about issues, whether it’s development decisions or anything. So strong words can be said but I do believe people make a special effort not to make it so personal that they make it uncomfortable at the next pot luck dinner.

Another thing, though, beyond being just a small community, I think on an island we have a real reminder all the time that we have to be inter-reliant in case of an emergency. Power goes down a lot. If there ever is the big earthquake or the huge wildfire that means we have to evacuate the island. So it’s not just we have to get along when we end up pumping gas next to each other at the gas station, but we are vulnerable if we’re not a tight community.

The lighthouse on Entrance Island, off the northeast tip of Gabriola, has been in service since 1876. It is one of only two manned lighthouse remaining in Gulf Islands. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Liam: Do you find that islands tend to attract people who come here to kind of get away from other places, you know; and perhaps they get so passionate about defending the place because they feel like their back’s against the wall – this is where they came and there’s just nowhere else to go.

Sheila: For sure. I work in local government. We see that kind of passion and that kind of commitment to protecting the place all the time. We certainly have a lot of examples of other islands that have just become completely overrun and damaged. But as well, there’s another side to that; there’s a lot of people who have moved here to escape rules. So it’s very interesting to bump into both the passion to protect the place but also the very strong resistance to being regulated and told to protect the place.

Liam: Regulate the other guy but not me.

Sheila: We hear that all the time. All the time.

Liam: You work with the Islands Trust. Can you explain a little bit what that is?

Sheila: Islands Trust is a unique governance structure; doesn’t exist anywhere else in Canada. It was put in place 36 years ago when the Gulf Islands were under huge development pressure. Governments in Vancouver and Vancouver Island were just allowing subdivision to just go out of control. So the provincial government put in place the Islands Trust Act which had a mandate to preserve and protect.

Liam: Are there things that island communities have to teach mainland communities?

A view from Drumbeg Provincial Park on Gabriola Island. Photo Courtesy of Islands Trust

Sheila: I think we have a lot of great examples to show of self sufficiency, of resiliency, of living conservatively and lightly on the land; on trying to make tough decisions in a civil manner that means we can retain our relationships and all get along after the fact.

Liam: Everybody who comes to an island has a story. How did you end up here?

Sheila: Yeah; it was random. I came out the year that I graduated from university; came west. I’d never been beyond Manitoba at that point; came on the train. It was all very romantic. Did a bunch of wilderness-based trips, and then with friends that I met on a kayak trip in the Queen Charlottes, they said why not come back to this great island where we live. If you’re just still traveling, we can get you a little work when you’re there and so I drove on to Gabriola and was instantly enchanted. Almost stayed at that point. It actually took me about five years to extricate myself from the rest of my life.

Liam: You seem pretty happy here.

Sheila: How could you not be? Look at this place! It’s gorgeous.

Liam: Well, Sheila; you’ve got a lovely island here. Thanks for inviting me out and thanks for sitting and talking to me today.

Sheila: Thanks for making the trip, Liam.

More information:

• Islands Trust homepage
• Gabriola Island Wikipedia article
• Gulf Islands National Park Reserve

Coast Salish elder George Harris wears his traditional woven cedar hat on a beach in the territory of the Stzuminus First Nation on Vancouver Island. Photo by Liam Moriarty

The term “Salish Sea” recognizes the original inhabitants of the lands that surround the inland waters of Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Georgia Strait. In Canada, those people are known as the First Nations. This week in our series “Reflections on the Water,” KPLU environment reporter Liam Moriarty stands on a beach on the east side of Vancouver Island with Coast Salish elder George Harris.

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GEORGE HARRIS: I’d like to welcome you, Liam, to the shores of the Salish Sea, the shores of the Stzuminus First Nation.

LIAM: Could you talk about – describe where we are sitting and what we are looking at?

GEORGE: Across the water we have the Gulf Islands. That’s the Lyackson right here in front of us. That’s Penelakut Nation over to our right. And the Halalt up the channel at south, and north of us is the Snuneymuhw First Nation. We’re all Coast Salish people. The kinship ties throughout Coast Salish territory are such that they’ve existed for countless thousands of years, actually. Our elders used to tell us, we never put the border in that divides Canada and USA. Our relatives at Lummi, Tulalip, Swinomish, LaConnor, are all our relatives and we’re related. Kinship ties with aunties, uncles, cousins that are down in the States.

Coast Salish men circa 1930s play a traditional gambling game using bones and specially carved tally sticks. (Courtesy Royal BC Museum archives)

LIAM: You’re wearing a hat right now that I’m imagining is a traditional sort of hat and it looks like it’s woven out of some sort of natural fiber.

GEORGE: I wore this hat today because it’s a cedar hat. Cedar is really a strong tree for us. Most parts of the cedar tree are used for different purposes. This hat I’m wearing now is the bark of the cedar tree, and it’s woven into a hat.

LIAM: You were raised in a somewhat more traditional way, I think, than a lot of Native folks were; more in touch with the traditions and the values.     Could you talk about that?

GEORGE: I spent lots of time listening to my grandmother who never spoke any English at all. She spoke only Hul’q’umi’num’. She would teach me different things about our culture and traditional ways of our people; teach me how to follow the disciplines and the teachings.

LIAM: What are some of the principles that she imparted to you growing up?

GEORGE: One of the things she always said is be proud of who you are as a person. But never be proud at the expense of another person. Be humble as you walk on this Earth. She said we’re poor people. On the face of the Earth we’re living among our fellow human beings and our creatures, sea, the oceans, our environment. She said respect everything. Respect your neighbor. Respect your wildlife. Don’t take any more than you need. Put back as much as you can. Help out other people when you can to take care of them. It’s called Tsetswu’ut – that’s helping each other. And she taught me when I was a very young age, how to be respectful to the women, ladies in my life; my wife. I have daughters and grandkids.

A traditional potlatch ceremony, circa 1920s. The hosts stand on a platform (upper left) and shower their guests with blankets and other gifts. (Courtesy Royal BC Museum archives)

LIAM: Now, you’ve been working to make the young people aware of traditions, and you’ve been working in the prisons to do that too.

GEORGE: Yes, we are very much so disproportionately represented in the prisons. We represented probably five percent in the province of B.C. in population but we’re up to 20-25% of our inmates inside the prisons are First Nations.

I know that lots of the problems that exist within each of the individuals that are there is because they are disconnected from their family; disconnected from their community; disconnected from their nation and they don’t have the value sets or the teachings – what we call Snuw’uy’ulh –  that’s the traditional teachings of our ancestors that helps to guide them as they live in the outside world in the communities. So they end up doing wrong things and they end up in prisons.

LIAM: What do you do with these guys in the prison?

Sailing boat races held on Kuper Island by the Penelakut First Nations, circa 1930s. (Courtesy Royal BC Museum archive)

GEORGE: I sing songs to them. I say prayers. I tell them stories. I always keep saying to them, “I’m not trying to change you if you’re not acceptable to that change; you have to give yourself permission to make that change but I’ll tell you who I am and the things I was taught and how we live here in Stzuminus Nation.”

LIAM: How was that message received — when you’re working with the young men who are incarcerated?

GEORGE: I give one example. One person who is very aggressive and strong and really made up his mind how he is as a person; that’s the way he is going to be. Nothing’s going to change his life. I said listen to me. And after 20 minutes of talking to him, I stopped and he looked up at me and he said, “I wish that I heard all those things that you told me now when I was a child. I never heard any of those things.” And today, I have more hope for him that I did when I first seen him.

You know, I’m really proud to be Coast Salish. My ancestral name is Whul-qul-latza. It comes from that island right there. And that’s where my great great grandfather came from and that’s the name I carry. I have a sacred inheritance that came from him and I hope to pass that on to my son.

LIAM: Thanks for inviting me to your country, George. Thanks for sitting and talking with me this morning.

GEORGE: Thanks, Liam. Thank you for making the journey here. Huy’ch’qa cmsiem.

More information:

• Coast Salish article on Wikipedia
• Coast Salish article in the Canadian Encyclopedia
• The Coast Salish Gathering
• hul’qumi’num treaty group

Mike Schiewe at his home in Hansville, on the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula. Photo by Liam Moriarty

By the 1990s, Northwest salmon were declared to be on the road to extinction. Fishing was cut back, development was curtailed, and dam and hatchery operations were improved to save the salmon. Are the efforts to turn it around working?

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This week KPLU environmental reporter Liam Moriarty talks with Mike Schiewe, a long-time salmon fisherman. He’s also one of the biologists behind the Endangered Species listings.

Liam Moriarty: I’m sitting on a bluff in Hansville, which is on the northern edge of the Kitsap Peninsula. We’re looking across Admiralty Inlet at Double Bluff on Whidbey Island, and I’m sitting with Mike Schiewe … Now, you’re a sports fisherman. You’ve done a fair amount of fishing around here.

Mike Schiewe: I have. For the last 40 years, first with my father in law and then later with friends, we fished literally all over Puget Sound.

The lighthouse at Point No Point in Hansville became operational in 1879. It was the first light house in Puget Sound. This is also the place where in 1855 Washington's first territorial governor Isaac Stevens signed a treaty with the S'Klallam, Skokomish and other Indian tribes to cede their land - much of the Olympic Peninsula - to the government. That treaty, and others like it, was the legal basis for the 1974 Boldt decision that affirmed Native fishing rights. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Liam: How has that changed; how did you see that change?

Mike: It’s been pretty darn remarkable. Early on the salmon season was year-round. Just about any day of the year you could head out, weather permitting, and find fish in some location. The 1990s brought much constraint and limited seasons because of the Endangered Species Act listings.

Liam: I guess it’s a little ironic because you were one of the prime scientists that did the research that led to those listings. Tell me about that.

Mike: I worked for the National Marine Fisheries Service. In the early 90s we started to receive petitions asking us to list various populations of salmon, pretty much throughout the Northwest. We set up what I would characterize as a scientific jury process where we convened panels of experts for each of the species. We launched a comprehensive survey of all populations of salmonids, all five species: Chinook, Coho, Sockeye, Pink and Chum, and we also did the anadromous form of Rainbow Trout – the Steelhead.

We ended up identifying — I believe it was 26 populations, ultimately, that we considered to be either threatened or endangered.

Liam: Now, take me back, say, to the 1970s. What was happening with Puget Sound salmon in that period of time?

Chinook salmon fishing circa 1900. Photo courtesy North Cascades National Park archives

Mike: I think for the most part the commercial harvest was starting to wind down. There were fisheries on Coho in the fall – purse seiners. There were gill netters still operating.

In a cultural, political, legal way, the fishing was changing because the tribes were beginning to exert their fishing rights when the Boldt decision came down. That drastically altered the fishery with the idea that the fishery had to be divided roughly 50/50 between the tribes and the non-tribal fisheries. The non-tribal fishery at the time was a very much declining commercial fishery. It was still a full blown sport fishery. It just slowly – the fishing abundance – the levels came down and there just wasn’t much work to be had.

Liam: Was there a sense at the time of what was happening; what was going on there to cause that?

Mike: Shoreline development – not only on the shorelines of Puget Sound but certainly all the rivers that salmon depend on as nursery areas were being lined with houses, roads, road run-off, storm water. The population of the Puget Sound basin in general was literally exploding. Basically as much as you can contribute, for example, the demise of fish in the Columbia River to harvest and dams, I think Puget Sound was sort of harvest and habitat loss.

I would be remiss in not I guess calling attention to the fact that this was a time of great growth in hatcheries. Hatcheries are a great tool for producing mass, large numbers of fish that can help maintain harvest at a high level, but they basically mask the decline of the wild population.

Looking across Skunk Bay to Foulweather Bluff in Hansville, WA. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Liam: At what point did folks start connecting those dots?

Mike: I think it’s a fair question to ask why the agencies weren’t doing anything on their own initiative. But frankly they weren’t. It took the push by some of the conservation community and fishing groups to change that dynamic.

Liam: In the subsequent 15 years since the salmon stocks were all listed, what’s been achieved; where are we at now?

Mike: I think we’re now just beginning to see some of the progress. Puget Sound is perhaps a fairly difficult environment to measure some of that progress.

The problem is very, very dispersed. It’s a very complex process of land use and counties and municipalities making changes in how we do those things.

Liam: Are we seeing the sort of progress that we would have hoped to be seeing when the fish were listed 15 years ago?

Mike: Habitats that support productive, sustainable fish populations don’t return to their higher state in just a matter of a couple of years or even a decade. It’s very likely going to take 30-40 years of sustained better management to see those things turn around.

It’s the old death by a thousand cuts which brought us to this point. Those thousand cuts slowly have to heal over.

Personally, I’m a very firm believer that humans are part of the ecosystem and they need to be on the table in their needs at the same time as the needs of their environment. There is no reason why they are mutually exclusive.

Sockeye salmon returning to spawn in the Cedar River. Photo courtesy blogs.kcls.org

Liam: Well, Mike; thanks for having me out.

Mike: Thank you for coming out. I enjoyed the opportunity to talk with you.

More information:

• Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office: Salmon Recovery homepage
• Overview of Salmon and other ESA listings in Washington
• Endangered salmon put damper on construction in the Puget Sound area Seattle P-I, April 21, 2000

Laura James, after a dive from Seacrest Park in West Seattle. Seacrest is a popular beach for divers. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Laura diving off Alki in West Seattle. Photo by Kees Beemster Leverenz

Most of us admire the Salish Sea from the shore. Lots of us enjoy it from boats. But only a handful of us get to experience these waters from below the surface.

This week KPLU environment reporter Liam Moriarty chats with veteran scuba diver Laura James. She answers Liam’s first question from 30 feet below the surface …

Click to listen to the story

Liam Moriarty: I’m standing on the beach in Seacrest Park in West Seattle. I’m looking east over Elliott Bay and across the bay is downtown Seattle. And I’m speaking with Laura James. I’m on the beach but Laura, where are you?

Laura James (on intercom speaker): I’m swimming through an amazing school of different types of small fish. There’s hundreds of them, and they’re swimming along with me.

Liam: Laura, why don’t you come in to the beach and we’ll talk some more.

Laura: Roger that.

Liam: Welcome ashore, Laura.

Laura: Thank you, Liam!

Liam: That looks like a huge amount of fun.

Laura: It is unbelievable. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever done.

Liam: It occurs to me that when you’re diving, you’re seeing the Salish Sea in a way that very few people do. What were you seeing down there?

Laura: Visibility was just gorgeous. I was able to swim right to the octopus den. And there was one very large octopus home. You know, I was able to peek in and get a look at the very, very large suckers. It’s a huge octopus. They kind of accept the fact that I’m peering in its den. They don’t seem tremendously bothered.

Liam: What’s the appeal?

A juvenile wolf eel near Alki in West Seattle. Photo by Laura James

A red octopus near Alki. Photo by Laura James

Laura: It’s seeing all the creatures in their environment. Aquariums are great for introducing kids to different sea creatures, but it’s so much different to actually be out there in their world. You’re a visitor on their planet.

Liam: What’s their world like?

Laura: So, there’s little animals like the barnacles that when they’re babies, they float around in the water column and then they plant themselves on a rock or a piling and they spend their whole life just cleaning the water in their area. You’ve got other animals that swim hundreds of miles, porpoises and our six-gill sharks and things …

Liam: Not to mention the salmon …

Laura: I’ve actually seen salmon out here. You can see them swimming along underneath the big balls of herring. And then they dart up into the ball of herring and you’ll see the herring scatter and the herring will usually swim and they’ll hit me and they’ll be like pummeling me and the salmon will go for ‘em. Some of the animals actually learn to utilize the divers for their hunting.

I remember when I was a brand new diver and I was out at the Edmonds oil docks, or Marina Beach as we used to call it. And was seeing one of my first little ruby octopus, little red octopus, and my dive instructor kind of threw it up into the water so I could see it floating down and get a really good look at it. And I was shining my light on it. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, came this bigger fish, came across and went “gulp” and my little octopus that I was so mesmerized by was suddenly gone!

Liam: It had joined the food chain (chuckles) …

Laura: It had joined the food chain, for sure! (laughs)

Liam: Now, how long have you been diving in these waters?

Laura: For about 20 years.

Liam: Over those 20 years, have some things changed? Are you seeing things different, are you experiencing it differently?

Laura: I think there is a tremendous garbage problem. Too many people, they look at the pretty beaches and they think, “Oh, it’s so nice!” But they can’t see what’s under there.

Laura spoke to Liam Moriarty from under 30 feet of water. The white wire is the underwater intercom system she used to communicate with Liam on the beach.

Liam: What kinds of things do you see?

Laura: Plastic bottles and cans, old car batteries, tarps, clothing, towels … If you read the articles about that gray whale that washed up on the beach …

Liam: That whale washed up on West Seattle not long ago, right?

Laura: Yeah, correct. And they looked in its stomach, and in that whale’s stomach was a huge amount of human trash, including, like, a pair of sweat pants … People will protect what they love. But they won’t fall in love with something they don’t know. That’s why I go out and shoot pictures and take video is so that I can show it to people , I can teach people about how amazing it is.

Liam: Now you said that you’ve been diving near storm drains when it’s been raining. And all the rainwater that comes off the buildings, off the streets, off the sidewalks, it all washes into the storm drains. What does that look like when it comes out?

Laura: It’s gray, it’s billowing, it just looks incredibly dirty. And then after a rain storm, if you go out near those areas, you’ll see this kind of film of tire rubber and brake pad and washer fluid and road grime covering the bottom around the storm drains.

Laura checks her SCUBA equipment before diving at Seacrest Park. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Liam: The rest of us, when we want to go into the wilderness, we get in a car or whatever and we’ve gotta drive 50, 80, 100 miles, and then go walking out to try to get away from civilization and see something in it’s natural state. We’re sitting here in West Seattle but you head under the water and there’s a way in which you’re kind of in the wilderness, arent’ you?

Laura; Oh, absolutely, And that’s one of the beautiful things about it. I can go out and kind of commune with nature without having to drive basically anywhere.

Liam: Well Laura, thanks for inviting me out and letting me have this little window into your underwater world.

Laura: It’s been a pleasure, Liam. Thank you!

Laura James shot and produced this video of a recent dive near Alki www.fearlessoceanproductions.com

More information:

• Washington SCUBA Alliance
• Pacific Marine Research environmental education
• REEF: Reef Environmental Education Foundation

Bob Shrewsbury is co-owner with his brother Ric of Western Towboat Company based in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood. Photo by Liam Moriarty

The Salish Sea is known for its vast natural beauty. It’s also a busy marine highway, used to deliver millions of tons of goods each year from around the world. A lot of those goods – from gravel to construction equipment – are moved by tug boats. This week Liam Moriarty spends a morning on Seattle’s Elliott Bay with Bob Shrewsbury of Western Towboat Company.

Click to listen to the story

Liam Moriarty: I’m on the tugboat “Triumph.” We’ve just come down through Salmon Bay, through the Hiram Chittenden locks here in Seattle and we’re out on Puget Sound. Bob, what are we up to today?

Bob Shrewsbury: Just boat delivery. So the other crew will show up at 1400 and take her to Alaska.

Liam: Your dad started Western Towboat not long after World War II, right? Tell me about how that happened …

Bob: 1948, started with one little wooden boat, 50-foot tug.

Liam: You must have grown up on those boats.

Bob: Yeah, I was born in ’53 and been around them all my life. Only job I’ve ever had. I made my first trip to Alaska with my dad when I was 7, and by the time I was 18 I was running boats as a captain to Alaska. Started out, we used to do it seasonally, and by the time we were 21 years old we were doing it year-round and I did that till about 10 years ago. Then I started taking more time in the office and now I’m hard to get out of the office.

The tug Trumph is one of 20 tug boats run by Western Towboat Campany, many of which the company has built itself. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Liam: You haul gravel barges, and some other stuff up to Alaska? Those are those barges I see being towed that have like a big pile of containers on one end and it kind of slopes down and a big pile of containers on the other end … are those the one’s we’re talking about?

Bob: Yeah.

Liam: So what are you hauling up to Alaska?

Bob: Heavy equipment, rail cars, machinery, lots of refrigerated vans, food and pretty much everything you need to live your life.

Liam: You talk about those runs up to Alaska. You guys run year-round. I would imagine the weather gets pretty snotty there, in the winter especially.

Bob: Oh, yeah. We’ve seen our share of bad weather. I mean, we’re had boats out there for a few hours in a freak storm and heavy winds and they’re going backwards at four knots and hoping that the wind quits before they get blown on the beach. So you’ve got to be on your toes all the time.

Liam: I’d think that down here on the inside waters, Puget Sound, Salish Sea, that it doesn’t get that bad.

Bob: No, no. I mean we get nasty weather once in a while where different kinds of problems develop; a barge breaks loose from a buoy, or … you know, you have smaller equipment, it’s all proportionate to size. You can get in trouble in the Strait of Juan de Fuca as easy as the Gulf of Alaska on a small boat if you’re out there and it blows 50 westerly and you’re not set up for it. It doesn’t matter where you are, you’ve got to pay attention to the weather and the current and tides and all that stuff.

Liam: I would think that, working on these waters for as long as you have, you’ve got a pretty good handle on the things like the currents and the tides and how that works in here.

The tug Triumph approaches the industrial zone of Harbor Island near the mouth of the Duwamish River in Seattle. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Bob: Oh, yeah. But we’ve been going through the Tacoma Narrows for 57 years with gravel barges so you know the places you go, And you can’t buck big times out of the Narrows but you learn where you can go to get out of the current.

Liam: Now, I’ve always thought of tug boats as essentially being all about muscle. You know, it’s just one big muscular boat. It that pretty much what’s going on with these?

Bob: Yeah, it’s an engine room with fuel tanks surrounding it, so it’s a lot of horsepower for the size of the boat.

Liam: They carry an incredible amount of fuel.

Bob: Our Titan Class tugs that we tow the freight barges with, they carry from 160,000 to 190,000 gallons of fuel. Typical 10-day southeast Alaska trip will use 40,000 gallons of fuel.

Liam: You grew up in this family and you’ve been out on the water here for a long time … What kind of changes do you see over the decades?

Bob: It’s more regulation but …

Liam: That’s a change. (laughter)

Bob Shrewsbury at the helm of the tug Triumph in Eliott Bay. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Bob: When I first started going there wasn’t near so many lights on the beach, that’s for sure. Now it’s like street lights when you’re going around Puget Sound. But there’s a lot more traffic. Different traffic. Bigger traffic, bigger ships. Everything’s gotten bigger.

Liam: And more complicated. I imagine the business you run is a lot more complicated that the business your dad ran.

Bob: Oh, yeah. Electronics and the tools we have to work with now, and the complications the new regulations of emissions and all that have brought in. The engines, you’ve got to be an electrician to work on the engine and not just a mechanic anymore. It’s a different world than it was back when I started, that’s for sure.

Liam: You still enjoy it?

Bob: Some days … Some days.

Liam: Did you ever consider doing anything else?

Bob: No, I really didn’t have any other desire to do anything else. You know, it’s something that gets in your blood, I guess …

Liam: You have another generation of your family coming up to work in the business?

Bob: Oh yeah, my two sons are both working on tugs. One of them’s a captain right now, one’s a mate. My brother’s daughters are in the office and hopefully we hang around a little while longer.

Liam: Bob, thanks for taking me along with you this morning.

Bob: You bet. It’s been our pleasure.

More information:

• Western Towboat home page
• National Waterways Foundation — A think tank related to America’s inland waterways
• Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society

Guemes Island resident Rachel Benbrook heads the Spartina Survey Program for People for Puget Sound. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Invasive species of plants are usually introduced to an area to solve one problem, but often end up causing other, bigger problems. In the Salish Sea, one of these headache is spartina grass.

This week in our series “Reflections on the Water,” KPLU environment reporter Liam Moriarty meets up with Rachel Benbrook. She heads a program that recruits volunteer sea kayakers to help eradicate spartina. Liam and Rachel paddle through the Swinomish Channel in Skagit County in search of the noxious weed

Click to listen to the story

Liam Moriarty: So we got some over there?

Rachel Benbrook: Yes; I see some spartina in this marsh right here.

Liam: Okay; let’s get in on that … Hi,Rachel!

Rachel: Hey, Liam!

Liam: Where are we at right now?

Rachel: What we are looking at right now is a really beautiful native, Salish Sea salt marsh. There’s lots of the pickle weed grass, the arrow grass and other native species in here. But unfortunately there’s also some invasive spartina.

Rachel Benbrook displays a sample of invasive spartina grass. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Rachel Benbrook logs the GPS coordinates of a patch of spartina grass in Swinomish Channel near LaConner. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Liam: Tell me about spartina grass.

Rachel: Spartina is a family of invasive grasses that has found its way here into Puget Sound. The grass was actually deliberately planted in the Puget Sound in the Stanwood area in the 1960s to help stabilize the dikes there. It happens to hold a lot of sediment in its roots which means it’s really good at doing that. But it’s also invasive.

Liam: What does it do?

Rachel: Once spartina gets established, it spreads really, really quickly. I’ve seen plants double in size in one growing season.

Liam: It just kind of takes over …

Rachel: It takes over and unfortunately, the habitat that it prefers are really high quality estuary and marsh and mudflat habitats.

Liam: So when spartina takes over one of those habitats, is it basically just not good for much of anything else?

Rachel: Eventually it starts to become nothing but a spartina meadow and it is only good for more spartina seeds that continue to spread through the really active currents of Puget Sound. In fact, from that original infestation site in the Stanwood area, we found spartina as far south as Vashon Island and all the way out west on Neah Bay. It’s also spreading up into British Columbia.

Liam: Point the spartina out to me; what does it look like?

Rachel: Alright; it’s right here. I’m just going to kind of stick my paddle by it so you can see it.

Liam: Okay. It looks like something you might see in your lawn.

Rachel: Right; that’s one of the things that drives spartina surveyors crazy because you see it everywhere. It’s a plant with attitude, kind of; once you learn to recognize it, those sharp leaves kind of stick up out of the marsh.

Liam: You’re in charge of a program – it’s kind of a citizen science program having to do with spartina grass; can you talk about that?

A kayakers-eye view of a salt marsh near the south end of Swinomish Channel in Skagit County. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Rachel: I’m with People for Puget Sound, and have the incredibly cool job as a sea kayaking biologist, of working with volunteer kayakers to get them out on the water, and train them how to do surveys for the spartina grass.
We work with regular citizens of Puget Sound to get them out there doing science and collecting data for the researchers who are then applying that and getting out here and dealing with the spartina that’s out here in the Sound.

Liam: I’m a paddler myself, and it occurs to me that there are a number of ways in which, by the nature of the craft and the way paddlers get around, that they could be actually pretty useful gathering field data for scientists.

Rachel: For one thing, a kayak only draws about three inches of water, so we can be in these super shallow areas such as the mudflats and deltas where we see a lot of spartina. We’re able to get into areas in a really, really low impact way, right up along the shoreline and the vegetation line where the spartina is going to be, and in areas that have been systematically surveyed by other methods for years, when the kayakers go in, we tend to find something that has been missed.

I was a sea kayak guide and I realized that nobody knows the local waters like the paddlers who are paddling those shorelines, spending a lot of time with those eyes on the water.

Liam: Once you’ve identified it; okay, we’ve got a patch of it over here – what do you do with that information.

Rachel: Our volunteers will take coordinates – GPS coordinates for where that plant is located. Then they provide that data for me. That allows me to then take that data and I produce these really cool maps out of it. I share those maps with — sometimes it’s state crews, sometimes it’s county – and sometimes it’s tribal, depending on where you are.

We had some spartina that we located here in the channel earlier in the season. I sent that data and two days later that plant was treated. So it’s really neat to hear them come out and control this stuff right away.

Liam: Has it really gotten to the point where we are literally looking at individual plants?

Rachel: It really has. It’s kind of a hard thing to wrap your head around; is we’re trying to find every single one of these plants. But spartina is that dangerous to the habitats of the Salish Sea.

What’s really cool about the spartina fight, is this is one of the very few invasive species stories that we are actually winning this fight. At peak infestation in the mid-90s, there was thought to be several thousand acres of spartina in Washington State. At this point we have got it down to under about 40 acres.

Liam: Rachel, I guess we’re done looking for spartina for the day; shall we paddle on back to LaConner?

Rachel: Yeah; why don’t we start to cruise on back and enjoy a little bit more time out on the Salish Sea.

More information:

• Spartina ID Guide (PDF)
• Paddling With a Purpose: People for Puget Sound Spartina Program
• Puget Sound Partnership Spartina Resource Center

Bill Taylor (left) and Justin Taylor stand on one of the Taylor Shellfish Company's beaches on LIttle Skookum Inlet on south Puget Sound. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Click to listen to the story

Justin Taylor: I’m Justin Taylor.
Bill Taylor: And I’m Bill Taylor.
Liam Moriarty: Where are we standing right now?
Bill: We’re standing on beaches of Little Skookum Inlet down in south Puget Sound.
Liam: Looks like tide’s going out.
Bill: Yep. Tide’s going to be low here in about two hours.
Liam: Smells like the tide’s going out too.
Bill: Yeah; it does. The smell’s … got a little bit of mud, and you can smell the water and kind of hear the clams squeaking on the beach as the water drops out.
Liam: Justin, tell me; how did your family come to this part of the Salish Sea?
Justin: My family actually came here in a covered wagon, the earliest of them. They’ve been working around the tidelands and that since the 1890s anyway.
Liam: Folks have been harvesting oysters from this part of the water for a long time. They were doing that quite a lot even when you were a kid, weren’t they?
Justin: In fact, at that time it was the native Olympia oyster and things were really booming at that time.
Liam: The oystermen always depended on having clean water. That became an issue as early as the 1920s.

Squaxin Island Tribe member Cecelia Bob dries shellfish in the traditional manner. Photo courtesy of the Squaxin Island tribe.

Bill: In our hatchery we have in Quilcene, we’ve had the last several years very low productivity of our Pacific oyster larvae because of corrosive water, low pH water.
Liam: I would think that puts you guys in a difficult situation. In Justin’s day when the problem was being caused by a pulp mill down at the end of the bay, you could do something about that, clean it up. If we’re dealing with something that is part of a large global climate change phenomenon, that’s not going to be amenable to the same sort of approach. Where does that leave you guys?
Bill: Well, it makes us at least look at different ways to solve the issue, at least in our hatcheries.
Liam: I know I’ve heard people complain about – especially geoduck — harvesting and feeling like people just come and tear up the beach. Is that an issue?
Bill: Certainly some people feel it’s an issue. Folks have questions about the environmental effects. There are studies going on and at least from our perspective and watching tidelands for a long time, we don’t see the impacts that they claim that there is.
Liam: Bill, this is a business that seems almost uniquely dependent on water quality, and that’s something you really don’t have control over because everyone shares the water. Can you talk a little about that?
Bill: We actually spend a lot of time working on water quality issues. We’re involved in everything from land use planning to making sure that there’s adequate regulations for septics, storm water issues. So we’ve been very involved both at the legislature and here at the local levels in the counties.
Liam: Both of you guys have grown up on these beaches, and have spent your lives walking these beaches and working these beaches. I would think that’s a real sense of connection, especially in a day when most people are from somewhere else.
Bill: I think probably anybody that’s grown up in a family that’s got a long tradition of doing something, you have a sense of pride. A lot of effort has gone into trying to make sure that we leave this place a good place for our kids when they come along. My niece who actually runs — operates this farm here, is our fifth generation to start working in the family business, and we’re – we want to see that legacy go forward and we want conditions to be here so that the family can continue to work in the shellfish industry and be prosperous.

More information:

• Taylor Shellfish Farms homepage
• Puget Sound Restoration Fund community shellfish farms
• Protect Our Shoreline group opposing large-scale shellfish farming
• Puget Sound Chemistry Transformed by Climate Change and Runoff: Scientific American Magazine

Wearing her 'Last Dam Summer' pin, Barb Maynes stands atop the soon-to-be-demolished Glines Canyon Dam on the Elwha River. Photo by Liam Moriarty

The Elwha River that flows out of the Olympic Mountains into the Salish Sea was once a celebrated salmon fishing ground. About a hundred years ago, two dams were built on the river. The dams generated electricity to power the mills of Port Angeles, but they decimated the salmon runs. Now, the dams are about to be taken down and the river restored.

This week Liam goes to Olympic National Park where he talks with Park spokesperson and longtime Port Angeles resident Barb Maynes about what’s likely the largest restoration project ever undertaken in the Pacific Northwest.

Click to listen to the story

Liam Moriarty: We’re up at the Glines Canyon Dam, which is the taller of the two dams on the Elwha River and the one that’s further upstream.

Glines Canyon Dam -- at 210 feet tall -- will be the tallest dam ever removed in the U.S. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Barb Maynes: We’re looking out across Lake Mills which is the reservoir behind Glines Canyon Dam, looking up into, I think. one of the most scenic views of the Elwha Valley. You really get a sense, I think, from here, of how huge this watershed is, and the scope from the high snow-capped peaks all the way down to the river’s mouth where we were a little while ago.

Liam: I want to ask about that actually because right there, I guess on the eastern side of where the river comes out, is where the lower Elwha Klallam Tribe has their reservation. Like most of the tribes in the Salish Sea area, shellfish were a big part of that; salmon and shellfish were two of their big things.

Putting the dam in did serious damage to both of those. We’re going to see shellfish back down at the mouth of the river again once this all settles out?

The lower Elwha River, below the dams. The vision is for the rest of the river's length to look like this once the restoration is complete. Photo by Liam Moriarty

Barb: That’s one of the exciting things about this project; that it’s truly a restoration from headwaters all the way out to the sea. Not only — we’ll see salmon all the way up — way, way upstream in the Elwha, at higher elevations — and we’ll see the beaches and the shellfish and the salmon coming back to the beaches along the Strait too. All of that is of utmost importance to the tribe. I don’t think there’s anybody who’s more eager than the tribe to see the dams come out, to see the fish come back, to have access to their cultural sites again.

Liam: A big issue with this is that you’ve got 100 years worth of silt and sediment built up behind that dam. How does that get managed?

Barb: Basically by the river itself. As the river enters the upstream end of Lake Mills, that’s when the river is carrying its load of silt and sediment. When it gets to the still waters of the reservoir, the silt and sediment settle out on the bottom. There’s a big delta there now. Basically what will happen as the water in the reservoir lowers, as we start notching down the dam, the river will just erode that delta away.

Liam: What about the electricity from the dams? Are we going to miss that? I mean, I’m sure somebody figured that, but what’s the calculation there?

Barb: All the electricity from these dams now goes into the regional Bonneville (Power Administration) grid. And the BPA has told us that, no, it won’t be missed. It’s a small amount, about 19 megawatts a year. And that will simply be absorbed. The loss of this 19 megawatts will just be absorbed by other sources throughout the region.

Liam: Restoring an ecosystem like this; there’s a lot of moving parts in something like this. What has to be done in order to rehabilitate the habitat in a way that the salmon will come back and be happy?

Barb: A part of what makes this project so special, is that really, the only thing that’s wrong with this ecosystem, that’s wrong with this watershed, is that the dams are here. We’re in Olympic National Park. It’s been protected. It’s pristine. This area here, we don’t have impacts from development, from any kind of harvest, any kind of agriculture, and so the habitat is here. All we have to do is let the salmon get to it.

A sport fisher on the Elwha River before the dams were built. Courtesy Washington's National Park Fund Flickr stream

Liam: Can we just basically take the dams out and let the system find its own equilibrium; is it that simple?

Barb: You know, it pretty much is. It pretty much is. Take the dams out, and obviously there are years worth of planning, there are years worth of engineering and research that have gone into designing the best possible techniques for removing the dams, for managing the sediment, but it really boils down to take the dams out, let the salmon come back to their habitat, and that’s it. It’s tremendously exciting.

Liam: You talk about how the river connects things. That’s an interesting observation. That must be a pretty cool thing to anticipate happening.

Barb: It is really cool. I was thinking the other day it kind of feels like the river’s just been holding its breath for a long time. If you think about the salmon returning, the watershed, the ecosystem here, inhales deeply. The salmon come back in, it takes a deep breath in, the eggs are laid, the young hatch out, and they head back to sea. The sediment and the silt heads out to sea, and the river breathes out. The river’s been holding its breath for 100 years, and it’s about to start breathing again.

Liam: Barb, thank you for showing me your river.

Barb: Thanks for coming.

Construction on the Elwha Dam began in 1910. Photo by Liam Moriarty

More information:

• The National Park Service’s Elwha Dam Removal homepage
• Interactive Earth animation of the Elwha Dam removal process
• Interactive Earth animation of Glines Canyon Dam removal process
• Bureau of Reclamation Elwha/Glines Canyon Dam info page
• Lower Elwha Klallam tribe