-On a crisp spring day in Suquamish
across the water from Seattle on the Kitsap Peninsula,
an unusual amount of marine predator activity gives hints
of something happening under the water's surface.
(splashing water and waves)
The scene is immediately recognizable to those
with ancestral knowledge of the region.
(seagulls mew)
♪♪
It’s herring
spawning season in Puget Sound.
-Yeah, herring,
is important to salmon in a lot of ways.
It's it's always been
one of the cornerstone species.
-Herring are a key
piece of the ecological puzzle in Puget Sound
and were an important food source for indigenous tribes.
But as the human population grew around them,
their numbers plummeted.
-We had been on a pretty long downward trend.
We had some pretty large fisheries that have since been
closed, partially in response to overfishing at the time.
Some of our more iconic stocks have declined by over 99%.
Some stocks have disappeared entirely.
But just
recently in 2020, we saw our second
largest spawning event since the 1980s.
It's a
two-sided vegetation grab that we just drag to pick up
samples of vegetation to check for eggs.
-There we go.
-So we've got a bunch of sargassum is the algae
and a very heavy spawning event came through here.
It's a good sign.
-With commercial herring fishing mostly halted in
Puget Sound,
numbers seem to be rebounding.
In fact, Phil and his team are tracking a new stock,
or group of fish that spawns together in a specific area,
that are spawning on beaches right near downtown Seattle.
Scuba diver and filmmaker Laura James was one of the
first to notice a sporting event off Alki Point in 2017.
-We were out here diving one day and we were coming back up
from from a dive,
and I noticed there were herring eggs.
My dive buddy
and I went on a little adventure around the point,
and we just started
walking and documenting where we saw herring eggs.
And it turned out
there were literally herring eggs
from basically down by Cove 2,
maybe a couple of miles away from here,
all the way down to Lincoln Park.
-Scientists have taken to calling
this new stock the Elliott Bay stock.
-It's sort of
one of the more interesting stocks because it's
both our newest stock, which is exciting, but
also it hasn't really settled on a preferred spawning area.
So we've seen at the Sculpture Park, we've seen it at Alki Beach.
-So far in 2023,
the Elliott
Bay stock hasn't turned up in its usual spawning grounds,
or if it did, it went undetected.
This points to the need for more citizen observers
to keep an eye out for herring spawning events.
Laura uses the West Seattle Blog
community to help notify her of activity off Alki.
-I'll literally say, “Hey everybody,
could you watch the shoreline and email me,
like literally email me personally
if you see crazy activity along the shoreline.”
-Another visible sign of herring,
which Laura was able to capture in these aerial shots
is white water.
-And it’s a
essentially so much eggs and milk in the water
that it'll actually turn the water milky.
And so that combination of white water
and a lot of predator activity
is what you can expect to see.
♪♪
-So indications
are that things are looking up for our Puget Sound herring.
Back here in Suquamish,
the tribe is celebrating
the return of spawning events like this one
that haven't been seen in a generation.
-I mean, our fishermen today haven’t
especially the younger
ones, have never been in our herring fishery,
because there hasn't been a harvest full of numbers.
It's been been a while since we've seen a
large return that you can actually notice.
-We’re cautiously optimistic that we're sort
of turning the corner.
And conditions have allowed us
to have a couple of good year classes
and hopefully to
start to see an increasing trend in our herring biomass.
-Cautious optimism sums it up well.
A growing population of herring and other forage fish
would be a welcome sign for some of the better
known species in the region,
since they are a key piece of the ecosystem
that supports larger animals like salmon and orcas.
-Herring, and herring in particular,
are critical to as food for salmon,
but they also act as a prey buffer for salmon.
So we've learned that forage fish actually will help reduce
the predation on juvenile
salmon from things like harbor seals and sea lions.
The Elliott Bay stock in particular
can be seen as a sign that efforts
to improve our natural habitat in the city
are having their intended effect.
-Where we first found it near the Sculpture Park,
there was an effort there to ensure that there was
some structure for habitat.
So I think it is a sign that if we're thoughtful about
how we're doing our development
and try to maintain some of those key
habitat features in the water,
these fish will take advantage of it.
-This is
a this is a brilliant natural event occurring
so close to a major metropolis.
I mean, how many places can you have
forage fish eggs being laid literally
with a city skyline in the background?
It's amazing.
-Amazing, indeed.
Another small reminder that Seattle
is at the doorstep of the Salish Sea’s diverse
marine ecosystem.
♪♪
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Tuesday nights at 7 on the Seattle Channel
or find us anytime online at SeattleChannel.org.
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