New King County Miller/Walker Creek Basin Steward Elissa Ostergaard wants our Readers to know that volunteers are needed for ‘CSI:Highline,’ also known as ‘Community Salmon Investigation Highline,’ which surveys local salmon in the area.

“In 2010, 20 volunteers each surveyed the creeks each week,” reads an email. “This year, team members will have the option of surveying every week or every other week. This means we need between 10-20 new volunteers in 2011!”

Volunteers will go through training on Wednesday, Sept. 28th, and will need to commit to volunteering either one day per week or one day every other week for the 2.5 month period from mid-October to late December.

To help out, please reply before Sept. 20th to Elissa at elissa.ostergaard@kingcounty.gov, and include answers to these questions:

• Would you like to survey every week? Or every other week?
• What days of the week are you available? (If you can manage weekdays, that will be especially helpful.)
• Will you attend the training on September 28 from 4-6pm?

To sign up, or of if you have any questions about whether this volunteer activity is right for you, please contact Elissa at elissa.ostergaard@kingcounty.gov or 206-296-1909.

Here’s more info from Elissa:

Willing to Mentor a High School Senior?
I am looking for one generous volunteer to offer to mentor a senior high school student for their culminating senior project. Are you willing to have a high school student participate on your team? Help them determine another way to use what they learn, such as give a talk at a neighborhood meeting, or a class, or write an article, or ??? Please let me know right away – we are recruiting high school seniors soon.

Information for New and Potential Volunteers – Be part of Miller/Walker Creek Stewardship
How many adult salmon return to Miller and Walker Creeks in Burien, Normandy Park, and SeaTac each year? The fact is we have only a general idea, but last year we learned a lot. In addition, we need to know how many of these fish are stricken by pre-spawn mortality each year, and thus how many are surviving long enough to lay the eggs of the next generation.

A better understanding of the numbers of fish returning to the streams and the extent of pre-spawn mortality is one of the top recommendations the community identified as part of coordinated monitoring of the streams (see the 2009 monitoring coordination recommendations). Adult salmon in our streams are the Pacific Northwest equivalent of the “canary in the coal mine” – they reflect the health of our lands and water. Knowing adult salmon numbers and what’s happening to them once they enter the stream will serve as “vital signs” for our streams. By being part of our Community Salmon Investigation team, you can help us learn more about this community resource.

To accurately monitor adult fish returns and fish health, we need your help! This e-mail asks for volunteers to collect data on adult salmon that will return to Miller and Walker Creeks from mid-October to late December. Please sign up by Tuesday, September 20.

Beginning in mid-October and continuing until late December, we need volunteers to visit Miller and Walker Creeks daily at several locations to look for fish. We need enough volunteers to staff every day of the week because only a sustained, daily (or close to daily) survey will provide us the accurate information we need to understand stream health.

This is an exciting and unusual opportunity to see parts of your community that are normally inaccessible. You will get closer to one of the iconic animals of America – the Pacific salmon. You will be part of an important community effort to better understand how well we’re doing taking care of our lands and waters. And, of course, you’ll get to cut open dead salmon bodies like the CSI teams you watch on TV!

Volunteer Expectations
As a volunteer, here is what to expect:

• You need to commit to volunteering either one day per week or one day every other week for the 2.5 month period from mid-October to late December. (If you can’t volunteer consistently but would be willing to fill in for a regular team member, please let me know and we’ll see if we can include you that way.)
• Two-person teams will be responsible for data collection on one day each week (e.g., every Tuesday). Ideally each team will have three or four people, so each person only needs to go out every other week, and there are enough volunteers to fill in on days when one team-member cannot go out.
• Volunteers should assume spending three or four hours on their day. If we have enough volunteers, we will make the stream reaches shorter and have multiple teams each day.
• You will work only during daylight hours, which will, of course, become more limited as the season progresses. People who work five weekdays will want to volunteer for Saturday or Sunday surveys. Those with flexible schedules will be encouraged to do weekdays.
• You need to be able to walk up stream channels/banks that are rocky and wet/covered in running water. You may need to climb over and under downed trees and push through or go under brush. Overall distance walked each daily survey will be about one mile (only a portion will be in the stream).
• You will need to go out rain or shine but you will not monitor when the stream is running high to keep you safe (plus it’s hard to see fish in high, turbid water).
• There are three sites to be inspected on Miller Creek and two sites on Walker Creek – four sites are in Normandy Park and one site is in Burien because all adult salmon migrate first through the lower part of the creek before spawning (or, sadly, dying before they can spawn). Short drives will be needed for you to reach all the survey sites.
• You will work in pairs for safety and to maximize data quality.
• You will need to follow the access requirements of the private and public landowners who are graciously providing us access to the streams.
• You will count and record information on living fish
• You will take measurements of each dead fish. This will involve handling and cutting open carcasses. Gloves will be provided. You will record information on adipose fin presence (indicating whether the fish came from a hatchery), sex, percent egg retention, spawning status, and if possible, coded wire tag scans (another sign a fish came from a hatchery).
• You will need to provide your own rain gear and footwear. In most cases, we expect you will need to use hip waders but knee-high rubber boots may suffice depending on your height and stream conditions. My rubber hip waders – which have survived many years of rough service already – cost less than $40, so buying a pair is not a big investment.
• You will be given sampling collection kits and recording documents.
• You will be trained or paired up with a trained volunteer who will teach you what to do.

Training
This community is fortunate to have some citizens who love the fish and work together to restore the streams. People so motivated will be offered more intensive training in late September. (However, everyone is invited to attend.) This self-selected “core group” will provide the “lead” team member. These leads will in turn train the other team member(s). Consequently, lack of previous experience should not be an obstacle to successful data collection.

New and returning volunteers, especially team leaders, are encouraged to attend the training:

• WHEN: Wednesday, September 28, 2011, 4:00-6:00 pm
• WHERE: Normandy Park
• WHAT: New survey locations, fish identification and measuring techniques, staying safe, scheduling. Please contact me to sign up for the training.

Sign Up and Questions
To sign up or of if you have any questions about whether this volunteer activity is right for you, please contact me at elissa.ostergaard@kingcounty.gov or 206-296-1909.

Meet Elissa Ostergaard, the new Miller/Walker Creek Basin Steward who has taken over duties previously completed by Dennis Clark, who moved on to greener pastures in a new gig with the Washington Department of Natural Resources.

Elissa, on duty since July, has over 14 years’ experience working on the broad range of stewardship duties, including policy development, salmon and habitat management, data collection, analysis, and summarizing, project management, program development, and storm and surface water planning.

She formerly worked for the City of Bellevue as a Senior Watershed Planning Engineering Technician, where she coordinated the Storm and Surface Water Comprehensive Plan, and managed updating of the city’s stormwater engineering standards.

For nearly six years, Elissa worked for the Arizona Game and Fish Department as a Urban Wildlife Specialist where she managed southeast Arizona’s urban wildlife program in which she built strong bonds with residents, city councilmembers, and legislators through constant, effective dialogue. She developed the “Living with Urban Wildlife” program which remains an extremely popular approach to managing wildlife in southeast Arizona. Elissa has led large teams and facilitated complex decision making.

Elissa was an Ecologist with the King County Water and Land Resources Division from 1994 to 2000. After leaving King County, Elissa obtained a Master of Science in Wildlife Science from the University of Washington.

So be sure to welcome Elissa Ostergaard to the ‘hood (or watershed)! She can be reached at (206) 296-1909, or elissa.ostergaard@kingcounty.gov.

Volunteers are needed to help “outplant” coho salmon eggs on Saturday, Jan. 22nd, beginning at 9am at the Miller Creek Plant of the Southwest Suburban Sewer District, located in Burien.

“Each year, Trout Unlimited volunteers raise coho salmon eggs during December-January,” said Dennis Clark, Miller/Walker Creek Steward. “At the end of the incubation phase in the hatchery, the eggs have turned into salmon fry and are ready to be outplanted in streams in southwest King County, including Miller and Walker Creeks.”

The annual outplant, which takes about an hour, is a fun educational and volunteer opportunity for people of all ages. The outplanting consists of swiftly transporting the fry in coolers or buckets to various locations across the basins and gently introducing the fish to their new home. To see just what the outplanting operation looks like, view:

• January 23, 2010 outplant story and photos
• January 17, 2009 outplant story and photos
• January 19, 2008 outplant story and photos

Basin Steward Dennis Clark gently pours the coho fry into Miller Creek in Normandy Park. Helping Dennis was Marion Yoshino, Normandy Park City Council member, perched on the rocks behind the ice chest. Photo courtesy King County.

Begun in the 1980s, the purpose of the Trout Unlimited hatchery outplanting project is to compensate for the presumed low survival rate of natural-spawning coho in the streams. Due to low adult coho returns and high storm flows caused by extensive impervious surfaces, it is thought that there are fewer fry than the streams can support. Unlike most hatchery operations, this program introduces the fry to the streams as soon as they have “buttoned-up” or absorbed their yolk sacks. The fry are not fed or raised in raceways before being released. This early-release approach means the fry are subject to the same evolutionary pressures as the natural-origin fish in the system. These pressures range from the natural – the frequently-seen great blue herons – to the unnatural – polluted stormwater and extreme flows. Life is hard for small fry and most will not survive to migrate to the ocean. For a very lucky few salmon, though, the outplant marks the start of what will be an epic life journey.

Here are the event details:

WHAT: Trout Unlimited Coho Salmon Outplant.

WHEN: Saturday, Jan 22nd beginning at 9am.

WHERE: Meet at the Miller Creek Plant of the Southwest Suburban Sewer District, located at 1015 SW 174th Street. Enter on the northern entrance:

• West on SW 160th from First Ave South.
• Left onto Sylvester Road SW (first light).
• Left onto 8th Ave SW.
• Follow signs to the sewer plant.
• Hatchery is at the southern end of the complex.
• Parking is limited, so you may need to park at the office (small lot by the flagpole) and walk south along the concrete path by the stream.
• Drive carefully through the complex as there will be a lot of vehicular traffic on Saturday.
• When driving in, note the stream revegetation “test plot” I’m working on with the Sewer District and volunteers.

INFO: Dennis will be at the hatchery at 8:30am to conduct water quality sampling. Parents are welcome to bring their kids early to watch.

Given the growing level of interest in the outplant event, most volunteers will outplant only to one location so the task probably won’t take more than an hour.

What to wear and bring:

• Warm, weatherproof clothing – even if it’s not raining, the water can splash around from coolers/buckets
• Gloves that can get wet
• Knee-high rubber boots or sturdy shoes/boots – both with good tread – you’ll need to get down the edge of streams to get the fish into the water
• CLEAN, WELL-RINSED COOLER that you don’t mind getting in mud

If you have additional questions, please contact Russ at rwelker@q.com or John at psmuramatsu@earthlink.net.

Trout Unlimited volunteers Russ and John transfer the young coho salmon from a tray into an ice chest. A battery-powered pump oxygenates the water during the time it takes to drive the fish to the stream where they will be outplanted. January 19, 2008. Photo courtesy King County.

This annual visible reminder that there are juvenile fish in the streams underscores how important it is to be good stewards of the land that drains into the streams. The waters of Puget Sound start in our yards, streets, and businesses before flowing untreated into Miller, Walker, and many other streams. You can help increase the survival rates for these little fish and improve Puget Sound by taking simple actions – and encouraging your friends and neighbors to join you:

• Scooping the poop
• Practicing natural lawn care: minimizing use of pesticides and fertilizers
• Fixing oil leaks in your car
• Washing your car at a commercial car wash or washing your car on the grass to soap/detergent out of storm drains
• Lots of other tips !

For more information, please contact Dennis Clark at 206-296-1909.

King County Miller/Walker Creek Basin Steward Dennis Clark wants everyone to “mark your calendar – this is one ‘season finale’ you can’t Tivo or watch online,” as “CSI: Highline” will be presenting its findings from its Community Salmon Investigation on Wednesday, Jan. 26th at Burien City Hall, from 7:30pm – 8:30pm.

“The exceptional scientific endeavor of 20 Burien and Normandy Park volunteers last fall gave us our first detailed understanding of adult salmon returns to Miller and Walker Creeks, which drain Burien, SeaTac, and Normandy Park,” Clark said in a statement. “Over an 11-week period, the volunteers navigated water high and low to count living fish and find carcasses for measurement and necropsies.”

Here are the details:

WHAT: “CSI: Highline” Season Finale Public Presentation on Findings from the Community Salmon Investigation for Highline.

WHEN: Wednesday, January 26, 7:30 – 8:30 p.m.

WHERE: Burien City Hall Activity Room (Council Chambers), 400 S.W. 152nd Street.

INFO: The January 26 “season finale” will feature:

• Overview of the CSI: Highline program – who participated, how they surveyed
• Analysis of the data
• Final population estimates for chum (the number of sightings shown on the web site “double-counted” some fish)
• Photos from the volunteers and me (including many not on the web site)
• Video footage
• What we didn’t expect to see – things exciting and strange
• Overview of key factors affecting salmon health in the streams: stormwater volumes, water quality, streamside vegetation
• Plans for the 2011 CSI: Highline survey season

We’ll also have a brief “thank you” recognition ceremony for the 2010 volunteers.

Whether you want to know more about the Highline environment or are interested in volunteering for the 2011 survey season, this season finale is not to be missed!

For more information, visit the Miller and Walker Creek Stewardship website here, or contact Dennis Clark directly at 206-296-1909.

Seven volunteer teams — Dubbed CSI: Highline — conduct daily audits of the Miller and Walker Creeks from early October to mid-December. Trained by Dennis Clark, the Miller/Walker Creek Basic Steward, the teams walk the creeks with the mission to identify and count live adult fish and conduct necropsies on salmon carcasses to determine if the fish were able to spawn before they died.

The data collected by the volunteers will shed light on trends in the health of the salmon population and provide a baseline to measure the effectiveness of improvements to their habitat in future years.

At this point we’re just over halfway through the spawning season for Coho and Chum salmon. To date 20 Coho salmon have been identified and 66 Chum salmon, with another 24 fish that couldn’t be positively identified. The season started around October 11 with the Coho salmon run and is now continuing with the Chum salmon run which is expected to run through mid-December.

This is the first year the CSI program is gathering methodical data for the Miller and Walker Creeks. Anecdotal information from members of the Normandy Park Community Club from past years suggest that the Coho calmon run is much weaker. Low Coho returns in the Puget Sound area overall may be contributing to this, along with a weather pattern of alternating days of rainfall and dry weather that make it difficult for Coho to migrate upstream.

For more information on salmon monitoring visit the CSI: Highline website.

Hi there loyal Burienians (that can’t be right, can it?). Leonard the goldfish here, with INCREDIBLE BREAKING NEWS!

I’m not usually one to type shout, but seriously, this is B-I-G big. After three long years of bugging the heck out of the Seattle Aquarium, they’re finally giving me a chance to get my own exhibit. I just have to prove that people (i.e. you) actually want me there. So I need to get 30,000 votes and I’m in. You can vote and find out more about my plight at VoteLeonardIn.com. Or follow me on my Facebook page.

Hopefully someday soon you’ll be able to follow me at the actual Seattle Aquarium, along with the otters, wolf eels, and moon jellies.

So please, Burienites (ok, that sounds better), help me prove to the Aquarium folks I’m not too common to get my own exhibit.

Remember, a vote for me is a vote for goldfish everywhere.

[Would you like to have a Blogvertorial story, Ad and/or Event Listing like this on a popular, fast-growing website seen by over 51,000 interested Local Readers every month? Email us for more info, or check out our Advertise page!]

Story & Photos by Michael Brunk

Tucked away in one corner of the Southwest Suburban Sewer District facility in Normandy Park is a small, unassuming building. It is here, just yards away from Miller Creek, that the Duwamish-Green Chapter of Trout Unlimited has their hatchery operation. On Saturday, January 23rd, members of Trout Unlimited and volunteers from across the community gathered here. Their purpose: to transport and release 110,000 young Coho Salmon fry into various creeks in the local area.

According to chapter member and local conservationist Andy Batcho, the Coho fry have been raised from eggs acquired from the Soos Creek Hatchery in early January. The fry are born with a yolk sac that provides nourishment at first, but soon the sac is consumed and it’s time for them to be released into the wild.

“It’s a balancing act,” says Dennis Clark, King County Steward of the Miller and Walker Creek basins. Despite the fact a wild Coho female will lay around 3,000 eggs, only 10% of those will hatch. This, combined with other factors, such as unexplained deaths of adult salmon before they can spawn, means that very few native fish are able to successfully reproduce.

Clark explained that hatchery operations are a useful piece of the overall strategy to bolster fish populations, but that it’s important that the newly planted fry not overwhelm the native fish. Timing and release location are two critical elements in ensuring that the hatchery-raised salmon are forced to compete and become healthy adult fish as a result.

In talking to the people at the hatchery and out in the field planting the young salmon, it is clear that this is an effort that attracts a broad swath of people from across the community – families with young children, retired engineers, doctors, local politicians, scientists, sportsmen and others. Despite the cold, gray weather, they come together with a desire to contribute something back to the environment.

By itself this volunteer-run effort is quite literally just a drop in the ocean, but combined with the hard work of many others in our region it adds to the incremental improvements in the overall health of the habitat in which we all live.

There are far worse ways to spend a Saturday morning.

Here’s a Photo Slideshow of the event:

Click to View Michael Brunk’s Photo Slideshow

Our friend Dennis Clark, Miller/Walker Creek Basin Steward for King County, alerts us that over 36 salmon have been spotted in Miller and Walker Creeks.

Here’s his report:

With the rains of fall comes another age-old marker of the turn of the seasons: the salmon are returning to Highline.  Since October 10, at least three dozen coho salmon have returned to Miller and Walker Creeks.  Coho have been reported multiple times in Normandy Park, Burien, and as far upstream as SeaTac.  On Tuesday, Josh Feigin, an environmental specialist at the Port of Seattle, saw at least seven fish in Miller Creek on the airport property.

Some adult trout have been seen to pass upstream of this Miller Creek waterfall, which is about 5 feet high.

Remarkably, three of the fish made it past a substantial waterfall near S. 157th St. that usually prevents further upstream fish passage.  The coho began their upstream migration from Puget Sound following the first fall rains and appear to come in spurts with each succeeding rainfall.

While these are fairly good numbers for early in the season, the news is not all good.  Coho salmon on Miller Creek are suffering from what is termed “pre-spawn mortality.”  Otherwise seemingly healthy fish are dying before they can spawn.  Their deaths are preceded by bizarre swimming in which the fish literally throw themselves out of the water.  I witnessed this disturbing behavior on Friday when a fish jumped over my boots before dying (more info here).  It seems that as the rains gradually wash the pollutants that accumulated over the summer off the streets, fewer fish succumb to this phenomenon (and where do these pollutants go when “washed away”? Read more info here).

While the exact cause of pre-spawn mortality is unknown, it is likely linked to some combination of pollutants associated with modern industrial life.  While research continues, Burien residents can avoid or reduce pollution that is known to harm salmon such as car wash soap (wash your car at a commercial car wash or while parked on the lawn), leaking oil (fix oil leaks promptly), and pesticides (limit use or choose alternatives safer for kids, pets, and fish).

Despite these problems, the presence and persistence of salmon that begin and end their epic lives right here in Burien is a compelling reminder of the amazing world we share.  If you observe fish in the streams, please let Stream Steward Dennis Clark know by e-mail or at 206-296-1909.

Here’s a photo Dennis took Oct. 23rd of a male and female salmon at Miller Creek in Normandy Park:

Here are some photos courtesy Brett Fish showing the various stages of “pre-spawn mortality”:

A female coho has flung herself out of the stream and is flopping on the gravel bar.

Here the coho has come to her side and died in the shallows. Periodically her mouth would briefly gape open. She was visibly swollen with eggs that she will not have a chance to lay.

Determining whether a dead fish found suffered from pre-spawn mortality is not certain but if milt (sperm) or eggs are present, it is possible that is the cause. Brett cut this dead male open, revealing that the testes – the two white organs in the center of cavity – are still full of milt.

More information is available at Dennis’ excellent blog here.

Highline Community College’s Marine Science and Technology (MaST) Center is presenting a special seminar on “Jumbo” Squid with David Eric Hamm, NOAA Fisheries Research Scientist/Contractor, this Saturday, Oct. 17th at their location near the Redondo Beach Pier in Des Moines.

Rumor has it that there may even be a dissection taking place.

Here are the details:

WHAT: Special seminar on “Jumbo” (aka Humboldt) Squid with David Eric Hamm, NOAA Fisheries Research Scientist/Contractor

WHEN: Saturday, October 17 12:00 – 12:45

WHERE: Highline Community College MaST Center, located near the Redondo Beach Park in Des Moines

INFO: From their website:

They’re Big, They’re Here and They’re Squid Jumbo Squid as Harbingers of Ecosystem Change! Dosidicus gigas, the Humboldt or Jumbo squid is a voracious predator with a unique ecology.

The ongoing range expansion of this creature, coincident with changes in the California Current suggest that something larger is afoot.

Are these changes indication of global change? What will the impact be to our fisheries and the ecosystem of the West Coast? Come to the MaST Center, and find out.

Please join us to hear David Eric Hamm, NOAA Fisheries Research Scientist/Contractor

More info here.

This means that now you can watch HD footage not only of the beach, but from underwater as well!

Here are some pretty cool video clips ranging from time lapses that show the changing tides (fast-moving) passersby and sunsets, to clips of dogfish and more; as always, we feature these feeds on our Webcams page along with other local cams:

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For video highlights from the Seahurst Beach Underwater camera, click here.

For an archive of Seahurst Beach HD clips, click here.

More info from their website:

The observatory is a collaboration between oceanographers and engineers at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory and the Puget Sound Skills Center’s Environmental and Marine Science program. The Marine Science program has a wonderful shoreside facility located at the north end of Seahurst Park in Burien, Washington. To support the salmon hatchery located at the facility there are two saltwater intake pipes that run 850 feet from the building out to 25 feet of water. Those pipes provide an ideal means to run power and fiber optic ethernet cables for underwater instruments, providing a permanent, real-time, high bandwidth presence on the bottom of Puget Sound.

The observatory was installed through a combination of volunteer efforts and a science and engineering development project at APL-UW funded by the National Science Foundation. That project is working to install a cabled-to-shore profiling mooring at the MARS observatory in Monterey Bay, California. The installation at Seahurst provides a plug compatible observatory interface for testing that system in diver accessible depths right in our own backyard.

Data from the CTD is collected every 1.5 seconds. Time-lapse video frames are taken every 10 seconds. Daily time-lapse videos are archived. Full-rate video is captured and archived when motion is detected. For presentation on the front page of the web site a snapshot is taken once per minute and twenty seconds of full-rate (10 fps) video is taken every five minutes.