West Seattle salmon: Help Puget Soundkeeper scout, and save, Longfellow Creek coho

November 21, 2014 3:04 pm
|    Comments Off on West Seattle salmon: Help Puget Soundkeeper scout, and save, Longfellow Creek coho
 |   Delridge | West Seattle news | Wildlife

(Photos by Torin Record-Sand for WSB, unless otherwise credited)
Tomorrow morning, you’re invited to join Puget Soundkeeper Alliance for a walk along Longfellow Creek in North Delridge, as the group continues to investigate the health of local salmon. We got a preview by joining Kathryn Davis and Michelle Piñon from Soundkeeper on Wednesday as they were joined by Elissa Ostergaard, a creek steward from South King County.

As WSB readers had reported earlier this month, they say they’ve seen many coho in the creek. We didn’t see any live fish on Wednesday, perhaps because of the semi-long dry spell (now over), but we did learn what you can find out from a dead fish, once one was spotted:

First, Ostergaard pulled it out of the water:

Then it was measured – and finally, Kathryn looked inside:

That one spotted underwater just north of the “fishbone bridge” was believed to be a hatchery-bred female that had spawned – no eggs found inside. Soundkeeper is focusing on pre-spawning mortality, in hopes of supporting further work to clean up the creek and keep out toxic runoff that can kill a fish within hours of contact – read more about their work here. Two weeks earlier, Davis told us, they had done another spot survey, finding 10 dead salmon:

(Photo courtesy Puget Soundkeeper Alliance)
She told WSB, “Of the 8 females, 5 had died before spawning. It is too hard to tell with the males, although both still had milt in them.” Today’s rain could bring more salmon in from the creek’s “mouth” – a pipe opening on the Duwamish River – and/or it could surface more dead salmon that we didn’t see on Wednesday. Join the walk tomorrow at 10 am and you never know what you’ll see:

RSVP to michelle@pugetsoundkeeper.org if you see this in time – or just show up at Dragonfly Pavilion, which is at 28th SW and SW Dakota. And if you’re inspired to take better care of our waters …

tox-ick.org has simple advice on what you can do, personally, for starters. (You can also ask Soundkeeper about volunteering for a full-scale salmon watch on Longfellow next year.)

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