Whidbey Island Seining Season Kicked off on Feb 7th!
Understanding
estuaries and their role in salmon habitat
March 6, 2006
The 2006 Whidbey Island seining season kicked off on February 7th, with a follow-up seining on the 22nd at Harrington and Race lagoons. Race has been added to NOAA's schedule this year because of a commitment by Beach Watchers to provide two "core teams" for the season. Core team members have agreed to learn all aspects of the operation, which includes net handling, species identification and processing, data recording, and water quality sampling. Whidbey core members are Jim Somers, Marty Crowley, Ken Urstad, Gregg Ridder, and Bob Buck. A special thank-you to Tom Albrecent, a non-Beach Watcher, who has yet to miss an event.
So what did we find? Harrington proved to be consistent with last year's early results: about two dozen juvenile chinook, a dozen very young pinks (some still with yolk sac remnants) and two chum. All were caught inside the lagoon. No juvenile salmon were netted in spite of four nearshore attempts. The team was encouraged by the presence of forage fish (juvenile smelt), which were absent from all catches last year.
Our first seining at Race was an eye-opener. Race is probably 4-5 times the area of Harrington. A substrate of mostly silt and mud made movement difficult. Our first priority was to establish net setting points both inside and near-shore. We managed 13 seinings over a five-hour period, but had yet to explore the west side of the lagoon. No juvenile salmon were detected during the February 7th seining, but there was an abundance of staghorn sculpin, Sticklebacks, and a handful of juvenile herring. We netted our first salmon during the February 2nd seining: a dozen pinks and two chinook. Based on these findings, we can say that juvenile salmon do use Race Lagoon as a nursery. Later seinings should tell us how much and for how long.
The Race team also met some very friendly and curious residents who were quite supportive of our project.
Our next Harrington/Race seining dates are scheduled for March 7th and March 21st . If you would like to help, please contact Bob Buck at bbuck@whidbey.net on Whidbey or Barbara Brock at wbbrock@wavecable.com on Camano.
For more information about this project read Understanding estuaries and their role in salmon habitat.
For more information about Island County estuaries go to the Class of 2004's
Estuary Project Page