Salmon Cemetery

Sliding his hand under the slimy salmon’s gill cover, Michael Masters grabbed the dead fish and lobbed it into the woods to rot.

From October to December 2004, Masters, an intern for the Stilly-Snohomish Fisheries Enhancement Task Force, and other volunteers dispersed more than 500 dead coho and chum salmon from the Stillaguamish Tribal Fish Hatchery into the Stillaguamish River watershed.

Pacific Northwest salmon spend two to seven years of their lives in the Pacific Ocean, where they absorb nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon. When they return to their streams of birth to spawn and die, their nutrient-packed bodies become a rich natural fertilizer essential to the health of stream ecosystems. Because of human impact, salmon runs are declining; fewer salmon are returning to streams to spawn. Only 6 percent to 7 percent of marine-derived nitrogen and phosphorus that salmon once carried to their Pacific Northwest birth streams is returning, according to a 2000 study by the American Fisheries Society.

In 1990 the Washington State Legislature created regional fishery enhancement groups to involve local communities with recovery efforts. The task force, one of 14 such groups in the state, usually devotes its resources to restoring habitat for salmon. But for the past two years it also has been distributing dead salmon along tributaries of the Stillaguamish River to restore nutrients to salmon habitat.

Plants near the stream absorb nitrogen and carbon from salmon carcasses. This in turn benefits salmon. Plants, such as alders, shade the stream and provide more than 90 percent of the organic nutrients that support other aquatic life, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“Adult salmon acquire a majority of their body mass in the ocean,” said Beth Sanderson, a research scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “They bring nitrogen upstream when they spawn. After spawning, most salmon species die and increase the overall productivity of the stream and forest ecosystems by becoming fertilizer.”

Replacing nutrients in streams is vital to salmon-recovery efforts because after the spawning fish die, their carcasses feed more than 40 species, including juvenile salmon, said Jessica McAloon, who works as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife river ranger at the Marblemount Fish Hatchery during winter.

“It is important to the cycle for the parents to die and remain because the bugs feast on the parents and the young feast on the bugs,” McAloon said.

Because not enough adult salmon are returning to provide nutrients to their offspring, the young salmon need a jump-start, said Scott Lentz, a district fisheries biologist for the U.S. Forest Service.

For the past two years, the Forest Service has worked with the National Park Service, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Upper Skagit Tribe, Puget Sound Energy, Fidalgo Flyfishers and Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group in an effort to restore nutrients to the upper Baker River, as well.

In September 2004, the Forest Service distributed 1,200 frozen salmon carcasses to nutrient-limited streams. Volunteers loaded 14,000 pounds of salmon into containers by hand. They connected the containers to a helicopter and dumped the carcasses from 100 to 200 feet above the ground—similar to firefighting drops, Lentz said.

“The drops are aimed at the small side channels so that during floods they won’t wash away,” Lentz said. “Accuracy does count to a certain degree; however, we’re not just doing this for the fish. Eagles and bears will like them just fine, wherever they land. It is possible to enhance nutrients with inorganic fertilizers like pellets, but using fish carcasses to enhance the nutrients benefits bears and eagles as well.”

Animals, such as bears and eagles, play an important role in the nutrient cycle. When predators and scavengers leave behind remnants of their meals and defecate in the woods, they disperse nitrogen-rich fertilizer farther into the forest.

Tom Reimchen, a biology professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, found that during a 45-day spawning period, a black bear can catch approximately 700 chum salmon and leave roughly half of each salmon carcass in the forest. The rotting salmon contribute approximately 120 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare of land, Reimchen said.

“The vegetation along the riverbank is very productive as a result of the salmon recycling,” said Chris Morgan, director of Insight Wildlife Management Inc., a company that specializes in bear research and education. “Wherever salmon and bears coexist, their populations will benefit each other and their ecosystems.”

Decomposing salmon carcasses lure bald eagles from Alaska to scavenge in Skagit Valley. One of the largest wintering populations of bald eagles in the continental United States flocks to the Skagit River to devour the dead fish, which attracts flocks of bird watchers to locations such as the Marblemount fish hatchery. The hatchery provides salmon for the upper Baker River nutrient rehabilitation project. When the salmon return to spawn and die, the hatchery collects the carcasses and freezes them until it can disperse them.

A template of what has been going on in British Columbia for roughly 15 years, this idea has only been used in this region for about five years, said Dave Steiner, a project manager for the task force.

“We know generically that this is doing good things for enhancement based on years of Canadian research,” Steiner said. “This technique helps produce bigger fish. Bigger fish equal healthier fish, which equals a better chance for survival.”

It is still too soon to tell if the efforts are making a difference in Washington, Lentz said.

A returning population of 10,000 to 20,000 salmon, on a consistent basis, would benefit the upper Baker watershed and its salmon populations, said Steve Fransen, a biologist for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

“Right now, only about 50 salmon a year for the last two years have been returning,” Lentz said, regarding the upper Baker River. “This is not a good amount for the entire basin. We will expect to see results in 10 years, possibly much less. The main reason we are not seeing results is that we are not placing enough fish in to make a difference.”

In order to disperse more fish, Lentz and salmon-enhancement groups, such as the task force, need more funding for such projects.

“We aren’t expecting much in the way of funds from the government for the next four years,” Masters said. “We are going to be leaning heavily on grants and volunteers.”

The emphasis on the need for salmon enhancement will not go away while political conditions are ever-changing, Steiner said.

“We need to protect what’s out there to preserve what we have left,” Steiner said. “Making it happen on a local level and uniting as a community is what is going to accomplish things in the environmental field. We have to decide as a society if we want the fish here and if we want to do something about it.” §

This article was first published in the Winter 2005 issue of The Planet, a Huxley College of the Environment publication. It is reprinted here with permission.