Orcasphere

The new Patagonia catalog (out yesterday) has a full page spread by Steven Hawley entitled “The Idaho Tide.”  It eloquently connects the wolves of Idaho’s Frank Church Wilderness with Snake River salmon and the southern residents, and it includes a great paragraph (below) with a quote-worthy line by Ken Balcomb:
“I think any reasonable biologist will [...]

Save the salmon — and us
Above is a link a nice Op-Ed piece by Carl Safina.  Below is my response, submitted today to the L.A. Times.
In his 1/24/10 opinion “Save the salmon — and us,” Safina points [...]

Good news for Elwha salmon from the March NPS newsletter. Might dam removal begin in 2011, instead of 2012? I’m trying to keep track of the timeline (and be sure it doesn’t slip backwards) here.

clipped from www.nps.gov

Work Progressing on Elwha Construction Projects; Ever Closer to Dam Removal

The Elwha Water Facilities (EWF) and the [...]

Sandra O’Neill, Contaminants in salmon
We’ve heard that S and N residents are both eating mostly Chinook.  Why are the southern residents more contaminated than the northern residents?
Contaminants in fish are determined by:

where they live
what they eat
how long they are exposed
how fat they are

Chinook and Coho have elevated [PBDE] because they stay close to shore, while [...]

Here we are in mid-February, a couple weeks into the blackmouth opening in the Salish Sea, and WDFW is opening up recreational fishing for spring (winter?) Chinook running in the Columbia [see today's email announcement below].  This makes me wonder where the southern residents are at the moment and what the run timing looks like [...]

Tina Wyllie-Echeverria
Collaboration with Eric Beamer and Kurt Fresh (tows), and many students/volunteers
1950-2006, about 50 sites around the San Juans have been sampled and have found juvenile salmon.  Of 656km of SJI shoreline, 430km is rocky beach.  Tow nets (164 tows at 37 sites, monthly from Apr-Sep) caught juveniles of 5 species and 785k fish overall; [...]

Eric Beamer, Juvenile Chinook salmon use of small non-natal estuaries  in the Whidbey Basin, eastern Admiralty Inlet, and the San Juan Islands
Most of our juveniles are coming from the Skagit, accumulating early in the year (feb-may, some years as early as december, often associated with floods).  Pocket estuaries are safer places (most fish are [...]

This just in from salmonuniversity.com:
Forecasts are great for the Queen Charlotte’s and the Nushagak in 2009
Canadian Fisheries claims the water temperature is the coldest in 11 years and the ocean conditions are perfect for setting up huge runs of returning Chinook and Coho for 2009.  In 2005 the Nushagak had over 300k returning Chinook – [...]

It will be fascinating to see how this money is actually spent. The article mentions using part of the $30M to retire licenses from commercial troll fishers.
I’m guessing the $15M ($7.5M from Canada and the same from the U.S.) will be helping to replenish the PSC portfolio. This could mean renewed funding in [...]

Some good news re offshore productivity in 2008, though the southern residents may not see the benefits for a couple years…

clipped from www.oregonlive.com

Oregon ocean conditions best for fish in 50 years

After several years of poor ocean conditions that left birds starving and fish dwindling, this year brought a healthy influx of cold, nutrient-rich water along [...]