Spawner Survey Report 2006-2007
By Kevik Rensink

Salmon spawner surveys, conducted by SFEG staff and/or trained volunteers, are conducted each year (October-January) at previously completed habitat restoration project sites. These surveys provide an estimate of how many returning adult salmon are using SFEG restoration sites and how many are accessing previously blocked habitat. SFEG has assisted the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) over the last nine years by supplying them with spawner counts on some of their index streams, including Jones Creek, Colony Creek, Mouse Creek, and Powderhouse Creek. WDFW uses numbers collected by SFEG, data collected by the Upper Skagit Tribe, along with their own index data to determine escapement totals for the Skagit and Samish Basins. This information helps to determine escapement goals for future salmon returns.

This year SFEG surveyed 16.3 miles (42.8 square miles) of stream habitat utilized by salmon at 29 sites. In total 1,715 salmon returned to these sites and 445 redds were documented. Among other things, the season totals show an all time high in the chum return, an all time low in the coho return. More coho returned (29) to Mundt Creek (Nookachamps Watershed) than any other stream. This is alarmingly low for a stream of that size and salmon history (averaging 208 coho a year). Two new coho survey sites were added this year: Pipeline Creek (a tributary to Jones Creek), and Cascade River Park Creek (a tributary to the Cascade River). The biggest positive surprise occurred in Marblemount on Cascade River Park Creek where 21 live coho, and 8 redds were recorded. SFEG had just completed a project in the summer of 2006 here in which two fish barriers were corrected and one other was entirely removed. The coho were able to move above these barriers and spawn, making a very successful project amongst an overall poor coho return.

One explanation for the low coho numbers is poor ocean conditions; unusual ocean temperatures which interrupt the normal process of upwelling, resulting in atypical food distribution and subsequent fish mortality. When there are conditions over which we have no control, the best we can do is keep trying to ensure the best quality habitat in the freshwater system, so that it is there when the salmon do come.

I would once again like to thank everyone involved in making these spawning surveys possible this year. Thank you Lucy Applegate for creating another great volunteer base which included volunteers Worth Allen, Dillon Bemis, Kurt Buchanan, Nick Handly, Erik Johnson, Jim Johnson, Bryan McCormick, David and Mary McDonald, Patrick and Carol O’Hearn, the Oster Family, Ralph Rowland, and AJ Thompson; landowners Tom Berry, Ken Goodpastor, David Gribble, Anthony Hamerski, the Janicki Family, Floyd Kennedy, and Mike Wood; SFEG Americorps volunteers Maya Carlisle and Neil Vargas; Restoration Technicians Danny Cain, Bob Keller, and Dwayne Massey; Upper Skagit Tribe’s Doug Couvelier and Todd Woodard; and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Brett Barkdull and Natasha Geiger. We greatly appreciate all the hard work and effort that everyone puts into this very important part of salmon recovery. Thanks, and we hope to see you all (and more fish) next year. Detailed information of a specific stream can be requested at 360-419-9016 or krensink@skagitfisheries.org.