UNION RIVER, Belfair — Hulking snaggletoothed salmon thrashed and rattled the steel pen as they tried to vault the walls.
Tracy and Kevin Stoops hoisted the tiger-striped black, burgundy and evergreen chum from the trap. The fish, fighting to get upstream to spawn the next generation of Hood Canal summer chum, was intercepted by volunteers at this weir used to tally the population.
The fish was one of nearly 13,000 the volunteers have counted so far in the largest run here since counts began in 1975. Hood Canal summer chum salmon were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act 25 years ago.
Some remember years when only a few dozen of these fish returned, an experience shared across Pacific Northwest streams where salmon are struggling to persist amid habitat loss, warming waters and low flows.
But here, sweeping habitat restoration by tribal nations, nonprofits and government agencies has helped usher in a tide of recovery, at least in some Hood Canal streams. The chum boom is a hopeful sign that Pacific salmon can recover.
Record-breaking run of summer chum salmon returns to Hood Canal river
Now the question is whether it’s enough to make them the first salmon ever to be removed from the federal list of endangered or threatened species. This run was specifically aided by improved ocean conditions and even more restoration work needs to be done, but a petition for removal is beginning to take shape.
“I hope [people] see hope, like it can be done, salmon can come back,” said Josh O’Hara, salmon and steelhead biologist for the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group. “We’ve got to keep looking for ways to coexist with these animals, with wildlife. … These fish can rebound.”
Recovery efforts
Pickleweed and salt marsh daisies swayed in the incoming tidal flows beneath Joseph Pavel’s feet on the Skokomish estuary boardwalk. Ravens guffawed from nearby gnarled snags, and mallard ducks’ wings slapped the water as they took off.
It wasn’t always so. Many of Hood Canal’s salt flats, sandy spits and marshy nurseries for juvenile salmon were diked off, filled and replaced with roads, parking lots, highways and farms.
“When I was a young guy, I even worked for the farmer for a little bit bucking hay,” said Pavel, the natural resources director for the Skokomish Tribe while walking near former farmlands.
Runs declined from tens of thousands of summer chum in the 1970s to fewer than 1,000 spawners for the whole fjord by the early 1990s, when recovery efforts began; they were extirpated from some streams.
“At the time when the summer chum were listed and we put together a recovery plan, there were no summer chum in the Skokomish River,” Pavel said, “and there probably hadn’t been for some time.”
But after a quarter of a century and thousands of acres of habitat restored and protected, the salmon are coming back. As runs declined, fishing was curtailed. Some runs were supplemented by hatcheries. Ask anyone what’s contributing to the recovery of Hood Canal summer chum and they’ll point to estuary projects around the canal and eastern strait.
After surviving a stint in the Pacific Ocean, some of these (typically) 4-year-old salmon probably navigated the grasps of fishers, hungry harbor seals and orcas on their journey to their natal river. These remarkable fish persevere amid what may be the warmest, lowest flows of the year in Western Washington streams.
Here, females will turn on their side and sweep bigger gravel out of the way for their egg nests, called redds. Males, with hooked snouts and caninelike teeth, will jockey for their turn to fertilize them.
Soon after, they will die.
As the first salmon to return in early fall, their bodies weave together the forest and sea.
Summer chum carcasses return rich with an early blast of nutrients from the sea to feed the green canopy above. They nurture many, like the osprey, bears and stream bugs that will feed the next generation of salmon.
These Hood Canal summer chum, unlike Chinook or coho, only use the lowest few miles of streams to spawn. When they hatch in the spring, they spend only days in their streams, usually jetting out to the estuary.
The original recovery plan drafted for summer chum identified the Skokomish River delta as vital habitat for juveniles.
Pavel was central to the Skokomish Tribe’s efforts to restore these fields to their natural state, a nursery for young salmon and shellfish and a resting place for migratory birds.
Skokomish began removing dikes and culverts and planting native species along the footprint of a former farm in 2007, after decades of planning. Now, the tribe has reconnected over 1,000 acres of tidelands informed by aerial photos from the 1930s.
The Skokomish River, with its 240-square-mile watershed, is the largest river draining into Hood Canal. The estuary restoration created what may be the most comprehensive effort in the greater Puget Sound region.
The Skokomish Tribe has reported young salmon from the Skokomish and other Hood Canal rivers and streams use the reopened habitat.
Just 5 miles up the mainstem, scores of chum on their way to their spawning grounds dashed through the riffles and rested in the deep aquamarine pools created by a newly built logjam.
Estuary and other habitat restoration projects help buffer and moderate climate stressors, like low flows and warm stream temperatures. Ocean conditions — temperature, food availability — are believed to have a big influence over the success of these runs, something that improved habitat can help mitigate.
“We’re really in one of the last wild places in Puget Sound and have the ability to recover the species,” Mendy Harlow, executive director of the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group said, “because of availability of funding and the fact that we’re able to educate folks about the importance of this species and how we need to get there.”
Can these fish thrive?
While the summer chum are well on their way to recovery, they’re not there yet.
“Everybody is in agreement that summer chum have made significant progress towards recovery,” said Scott Bass, of the Point No Point Treaty Council. “It’s where you mark that finish line and decide to delist. That’s what we’re all sort of working on right now is where that finish line is.”
To put a petition together, the Hood Canal Coordinating Council — which is leading efforts to delist — would need to show that the populations across Hood Canal and the Strait of Juan de Fuca unit are abundant and successfully spawning across years, the habitat is in good shape and the fisheries management is in place to protect them into the future.
Salmon populations are considered viable if the risk of extinction is less than 5% over the next 100 years. A 2022 analysis found that Hood Canal summer chum had a “moderate” risk of extinction.
The Hood Canal Coordinating Council, which includes the Port Gamble S’Klallam and Skokomish tribes and Jefferson, Kitsap and Mason counties, believes it’s getting close. Most streams are seeing returns of summer chum that seem to reach or exceed those seen in the 1970s, the earliest available data before runs plummeted and the fish were listed.
After a six-year period of good ocean conditions for summer chum leading to high returns, populations in streams across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Hood Canal suddenly dropped to much lower abundance levels, according to the Point No Point Treaty Council. However, improved ocean conditions in recent years have led to the populations rebounding, but not all streams have shown a strong sign of recovery yet.
There’s still habitat work to be done in the Dungeness River and some west Kitsap streams to help usher summer chum back, and state and tribal co-managers are considering reintroducing the species in some streams where they have been largely absent.
The coordinating council plans to pursue the habitat work whether or not it is necessary for delisting and hopes investments in projects to benefit chum would continue long after.
