Category: Blog topics

February 16, 2022

Governor’s renewed salmon strategy faces decisive period in the current Legislature

State legislation designed to enhance salmon habitat by requiring protective buffers along streams has been set aside pending further discussions over the coming year. Meanwhile, several other salmon-protection measures proposed by the governor could move forward with decisive funding from the Legislature.

Washington Capitol, Olympia

The buffer bill (HB 1838), named the Lorraine Loomis Act, would prohibit degradation of streamside habitat while encouraging restoration within prescribed “riparian management zones” on both public and private lands. Such requirements would apply to farmland, areas destined for development and even properties undergoing redevelopment. The bill is part of Gov. Jay Inslee’s wide-ranging “Salmon Strategy Update” (PDF 1.4 mb), which was proposed with a price tag of $187 million for the first year, according to a policy brief (PDF 1.4 mb) on the topic.
Maintaining vegetation — including tall trees — along streams helps to shade the water and avoid temperatures that can be debilitating or lethal to fish. (See my story in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.) Vegetated buffers also can filter out pollution from upstream areas, provide food and shelter for fish and wildlife, and help to mitigate high and low streamflows.
During recent hearings, numerous farmers and representatives of agricultural groups complained that they had not been consulted before the buffer bill was dropped on them. They said the stream-buffer requirements could take a severe financial toll on their operations, even if they were provided with some compensation for production losses and grants for restoration, as proposed in the bill.
Faced with this powerful opposition, the bill never came up for a vote in the only committee where a hearing was held: the House Rural Development, Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. (Videos available via TVW.)
On the Senate side, the handwriting was already on the wall. On Feb. 3, the Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources and Parks Committee held a work session on the governor’s salmon strategy. Sen. Kevin Van De Wege, the committee’s chairman, asked the governor’s staffers if they had done any public polling to measure support for the buffers bill.
“I think, to be honest with you, the way the bill was introduced, I don’t think it has passed the court of public opinion,” Van De Wege said. “I would be worried about doing a heavy lift like that to have it simply overturned by referendum — which I think would be likely the way the bill was introduced.”
Jennifer Hennessey, the governor’s policy adviser on environment, water and ocean health, said she was unaware of any polls on the issue. The legislation resulted from discussions about the needs of salmon with Washington’s native tribes, she noted.
“We certainly recognize that there is more work that needs to be done to talk about the needs of riparian habitat with a variety of stakeholders and the way we get to the end goal of improving habitat for salmon,” Hennessey said.
Other provisions
While legal mandates for buffers are off the table for the current legislative session, other aspects of the bill could be accomplished with funding in the supplemental budget, a draft of which should soon be made public.

Under consideration for funding is a process to facilitate a “diverse stakeholder group” that would discuss buffers as part of a legislative package for the next session, according to Sen. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island, who chairs the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
Other programs described within the bill could be started or enhanced with dedicated funding, she said. They could include high-tech mapping to locate important streamside habitat, an analysis to identify high-priority areas for restoration, and a program to build up a nursery stock of trees for extensive planting efforts. Appropriations for these efforts would be directed to the state departments of Ecology and Fish and Wildlife.
Protecting salmon streams with vegetated buffers is an urgent need in the effort to restore salmon populations, as climate change increases its impact, said Dave Herrera, fisheries and wildlife policy director for the Skokomish Tribe and vice chairman of the Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Council.
“The tribes have been talking about the need for adequate riparian buffers for a long time, not just on agricultural land but for all lands with salmon streams,” he said. In 2019, during the annual Centennial Accord discussions, Gov. Inslee made a commitment to the tribes to establish statewide buffer standards. (See the June 4, 2020, column by the late tribal leader Lorraine Loomis, for whom the legislation is named.)
Representatives of the Washington Department of Agriculture and Washington Conservation Commission were involved in meetings about the buffer standards, Herrera said. “I was surprised to hear that the communities served by those agencies were not aware.”
Herrera said he is now getting a lesson about the pace of the legislative process and remains optimistic that people will come to understand the needs of salmon in time to save them. Failure of the Lorraine Loomis Act during this legislative session is a setback, he said, but things are at least moving forward.
“To his credit, the governor stepped up and developed a bill that got introduced, and it is setting up a conversation that we have been needing for a long time,” he said. “People need to understand the urgency. It is getting to the point where we have to ask ourselves if we really want to recover salmon or if it is just too hard for us to do.”
Buffers defined
As proposed, salmon streams would be mapped with riparian management zones to identify the width of required buffers. That width relates to the area’s 200-year “site potential tree height” — the height that an average tree would reach in 200 years in a given location. Thus the buffer can range from 100 to 240 feet from the edge of a stream, depending on soils, rainfall, topography and other factors. These are the standards recommended in a report called “Riparian Ecosystems, Volume 2, Management Recommendations” by the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Under proposed legislation, now on hold, salmon habitat would be protected by creating a buffer zone beyond the immediate stream channel, as recommended in “Riparian Ecosystems, Volume 2.” (Click on image to download document.)

Using tree height to establish the buffer width is partially based on the idea that trees falling into a stream add critical structure, helping to create pools and riffles needed for safe salmon migration and spawning. The idea grew out of findings from a 1993 report by the multi-agency federal Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team (PDF 68.5 mb), or FEMAT.
Some people testifying against the proposed buffers bill say the tree-height approach lacks an adequate scientific foundation to become a requirement in state law. No doubt this will be a major topic of discussion during the anticipated stakeholders meetings, which are likely to include representatives of farmers, developers, local governments, businesses, environmental interests and more. By the way, forestland that is subject to the Washington Forest Protection Act must comply with separate buffer regulations, which undergo changes based on emerging science.
As written into the proposed legislation, the required buffers on private land could be reduced if the protected area takes up more than half the parcel.
Voluntary stewardship
Several people who testified on the buffers bill worried that it would supplant a voluntary stewardship program in which farmers work with local government experts to establish reasonable buffers protective of salmon habitat without overly affecting their livelihood.
“Voluntary programs do work when they are sufficiently funded, but the state has not provided enough funding,” said Tom Salzer, executive director of the Washington Association of Conservation Districts, which represents 45 local districts.
Over the last three biennia, the Washington Conservation Commission requested nearly $20 million for the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, Salzer testified during the first hearing on the bill. That program provides $3 in federal funds for every $1 in state funding for habitat protection and improvement. The Legislature provided less than half the requested amount, losing out on nearly $30 million in habitat restoration money, he said.
“We believe that if sufficient funding had been provided for voluntary conservation, today there would be no perceived need for this legislation, he added.
The Voluntary Stewardship Program, created in 2011, enlisted 27 of the 49 counties before a cutoff deadline in 2012. A new bill in this year’s Legislature (HB 1856) would allow any other county to join by July 1, 2023. The main concern expressed during hearings on the bill was that each local program would receive even less money if the Legislature failed to increase overall funding. The bill is now up for a vote on the House floor.
Budget decisions
Beyond the proposed buffer requirements now on hold along with a proposal for $100 million in grants for affected property owners, the governor’s revised salmon strategy includes the following elements:

Riparian protection mapping: Buffer widths and existing conditions could be identified for streams throughout the state. WDFW, $4.7 million.
Plant propagation: Public and private nurseries could be funded to grow trees and plants available for buffer restoration. State Conservation Commission, $1.3 million.
Toxic tires: The search continues to identify solutions to a deadly chemical associated with tires that washes into stormwater, gets into streams and kills coho salmon, with impairment to other species. Ideas include filtering stormwater and identifying alternative chemicals. Department of Ecology, $2.7 million.
Stormwater: Grants are proposed for increasing local stormwater capacity, $4 million, and encouraging public-private stormwater partnerships, $1 million, both through the Department of Ecology.
Streamflow restoration: “Green infrastructure” projects can capture and store excess water during heavy rainfall events and then release the water when streamflows drop to critically low levels during dry periods. Benefits include reduced pollution and cooler water in streams. Ecology, $5.5 million.
Fish passage programs: Efforts to remove or replace culverts and other barriers to salmon migration could be increased by prioritizing the needs and drafting new state rules to address the problem. WDFW, $654,000.
Harvest monitoring and enforcement: WDFW could increase its ability to protect salmon during commercial and sport fisheries with increased enforcement, $1.2 million; environmental prosecution, $852,000; and fisheries planning, $842,000. A license buy-back program could reduce gillnets on the Columbia River, $16.7 million.
Hatchery programs: An evaluation of hatchery programs in Puget Sound by WDFW could help to improve survival rates of hatchery fish and reduce impacts on wild salmon, $4.3 million. Also proposed is a new hatchery on the Deschutes River in South Puget Sound, $2.2 million.
Hydropower: State officials could increase their collaborative work on the Columbia and Snake River dam issues during federal relicensing to ensure state interests are met in protecting salmon and water quality, $1.1 million. A Snake River mitigation study will help determine if the removal of four dams is a feasible and reasonable solution, $375,000.
Skagit River protection: The Department of Commerce will seek to protect the upper Skagit from future development, $4.5 million.
Science and monitoring: WDFW could increase monitoring of adult and juvenile salmon migration to evaluate habitat function and salmon productivity, $2.4 million. Other studies could focus on forage fish populations, which are important to salmon and many other species, $721,000.
Salmon recovery plans: Puget Sound Partnership could coordinate the update to salmon recovery plans in the Puget Sound region, including support to local governments that must implement some aspects of the plan, $2.6 million.

Behind-the-scenes budget negotiations over salmon funding have been ongoing this week, with decisions to affect funding for these proposed projects that could be started this year.

February 3, 2022

North Pacific expedition gets underway aboard four ocean-going research ships

A North Pacific research expedition is underway, with projects said to be bigger, bolder and more scientifically sophisticated than cruises in 2019 and 2020.
Four research vessels carrying more than 60 scientists from various countries will span out across the Pacific Ocean to increase their understanding of salmon — including migration, environmental stresses, availability of prey and risks from predators. Researchers aboard a U.S. ship operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration left from Port Angeles this morning.

The NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada

There has never been a research cruise as involved as this expedition, scheduled from now into April, according to Laurie Weitkamp, chief U.S. scientist for the 2022 Pan-Pacific Winter High Seas Expedition. The geographic reach is much larger than during similar expeditions in 2019 and 2020, Laurie told me. Advanced research equipment will help to improve data-gathering, and the analyses are growing ever more sophisticated.
Many salmon populations in the North Pacific have been declining since the 1990s. An important goal of the expedition is to better understand how physical and biological conditions can affect marine survival, especially during this critical winter period. Understanding the causes of poor marine survival could lead to better management of the ocean resources, experts say.
It will be interesting to follow the movement of the four ships in real time, as displayed on the Live Vessel Tracking Map.

The Live Vessel Tracking Map shows the location of the NOAH Ship Bell M. Shimada after leaving Port Angeles this morning. // Map: International Year of the Salmon

In addition, anyone interested can learn about shipboard activities as they are reported on social media:

“It is incredibly exciting to be part of such an amazing scientific expedition,” said Weitkamp, a salmon biologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Newport, Ore. “This is definitely a once-in-a-career opportunity, and I am really looking forward to all the discoveries we will collectively make. It’s been a long road putting it all together, but I am confident this cruise will change how we think about salmon in the ocean. It’s Darwin’s voyage of the Beagle of our time.”
“This is an exciting time for salmon science,” agreed Brian Riddell, science adviser for Canada’s Pacific Salmon Foundation. “For the first time in decades, international cooperation across the North Pacific will provide an invaluable snapshot of salmon distributions, their health, and their environmental conditions in these times of changing climate. I expect these results will be foundational as we also begin a much larger study under the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science.”
For these and other prepared statements, check out the news release about the expedition.
The research fleet for the 2022 expedition consists of the NOAAS Bell M. Shimada from the United States, the CCGR Sir John Franklin from Canada, the RV TINRO from Russia, and a Canadian commercial fishing vessel, the FV Raw Spirit. This year’s expedition was originally planned for last year but was delayed because of COVID-19.

The Canadian Coast Guard vessel Sir John Franklin

To cover a major section of the ocean, the ships will travel in strategic patterns within assigned zones, as shown on the map above.
The North Pacific expedition involves a variety of government, academic, industry and non-governmental groups. It is part of a five-year endeavor called the International Year of the Salmon, which strives to understand the role of salmon in a worldwide ecosystem affected by human activities. The hemispheric partnership is led by the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission and the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization.
Some areas of study:
Distribution of various salmon species: A key question has been where the salmon can be found at various times and places in the ocean. After the 2019 expedition, researchers were raising questions about the location of pink salmon, because so few were caught in deep waters where more had been expected, as I reported in Our Water Ways, March 22, 2019. On the other hand, the researchers had expected to catch fewer coho than they did that year, because they thought coho would be closer to the coast.
[iframe align=”right” width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/d-YicJQnsJw”%5D
In 2020 (without U.S. scientists because of COVID), the research vessels found more pink and chum salmon early in the expedition than they did later in the same area, suggesting that the fish were schooling more than expected from previous Russian studies. See Our Water Ways, April 9, 2020.
Also, besides covering more area of the ocean at one time, the researchers will deploy gillnets as well as trawl equipment to see whether different types of fishing gear catch different fish in the open ocean. Varying environmental conditions during all three years of research could help to identify what causes the fish to move to particular places.
Expanding use of environmental DNA: The technique of identifying what species are present in a given area by testing for DNA in the water has undergone major advancements. Now, thanks to a more extensive genetic baseline, researchers are able to identify many different populations of salmon as related to their streams of origin. Studies in 2019 and 2020 showed that the presence of salmon observed by using eDNA techniques was quite similar to the actual fish caught in the nets.
[iframe align=”right” width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fyearofthesalmon%2Fposts%2F1402857223466680&show_text=true&width=500″%5D
These eDNA techniques also can determine the presence of species that only come to the surface at night, such as squid, or species that tend to avoid the ships, such salmon sharks and Dall’s porpoises, noted Christoph Deeg, postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, explaining the preliminary results from the 2019 and 2020 expeditions during an online seminar. Using eDNA to locate species that eat salmon, compete with them for prey, or provide them nutrition can help define the dynamic interactions taking place in the oceanic food web. Check out the online seminar featuring Deeg and Kristi Miller-Saunders, head of molecular genetics at Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Health and condition of salmon: The health of the salmon can be judged in part by their size at a certain age. In 2019, chum salmon seemed skinny and their stomachs were often empty, compared to coho salmon which seemed in better shape. The question of where the coho were finding prey not consumed by chum remained an open question. Measuring salmon stomach contents and analyzing fatty acids will continue to provide clues about what different salmon are eating.

New genomic techniques are being used to screen for pathogens in salmon, including a variety of bacteria and viruses. Non-lethal sampling involves using a swab on salmon gills, not unlike testing for the COVID virus in humans, according to Kristi Miller-Saunders. Preliminary analyses from the 2019 expedition revealed 21 pathogens in coho, chum, pink, and sockeye salmon.
Genetic techniques also can be used to identify chemicals produced by salmon under stress, with specific biomarkers determining the type of stress: temperature, low oxygen, viral disease and so on. The expedition is expected to result in the most comprehensive study of salmon health ever conducted in the winter, leading to insights into ocean mortality among salmon.
Ocean conditions: Besides traditional equipment that can measure ocean temperature, salinity, oxygen levels and other measures, the 2022 expedition will deploy underwater gliders, shaped like torpedoes, which monitor conditions as they move along. Gliders can be equipped with active and passive acoustic sensors to help locate marine creatures with sonar and identify species by the sounds they make. (Read the article by Caroline Graham, including glider routes, on the Year of the Salmon website.) Expedition ships also will deploy Argo floats that will drift with the currents and record various water quality data, including oxygen levels.
Plankton production and distribution: Since phytoplankton form the base of the food web, it is important to understand what limits their growth. Measuring levels of different types of phytoplankton and the surrounding physical conditions — from temperature to trace metals to stratification — could help explain the factors that limit primary production and ultimately the food for salmon. Studies of what drives the growth and consumption of different types of zooplankton in the ocean is another important piece of the puzzle.
As for financing the expedition, multiple sources of funding came together, including contributions of ship time by the U.S. and Canada as well as additional financial resources from agencies of the two governments. In addition, donations came from the North Pacific Research Board, the Great Pacific Foundation, the Pacific Salmon Foundation, the Russian Federal Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography, Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency, the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, the North Pacific Fisheries Commission, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Tula Foundation, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of British Columbia, Oregon State University, and the University of Washington.

January 21, 2022

Scientists look for answers in methane bubbles rising from bottom of Puget Sound

In 2011, sonar operators aboard the ocean-going Research Vessel Thomas G. Thompson inadvertently recorded a surprising natural phenomenon, as the 274-foot ship traversed through Puget Sound while returning to port at the University of Washington.
At the time, researchers on board were focused on a host of other projects. They might not have known that the ship’s multi-beam sonar was even turned on. They certainly didn’t realize that the sonar was picking up images that would later be interpreted as multiple plumes of methane bubbles rising from the bottom of Puget Sound.

Methane bubble plumes (yellow and white circles) are shown along the ship paths (purple). Black lines depict fault zones. Major sewer outfalls, shown as black squares, do not line up with the plumes so were ruled out as a source. (From article by Johnson et al, UW)

“Nobody looked at the data until about three years ago, when a former student of mine was working on a project looking at bubble plumes out on the Washington (Coast) margins,” said Paul Johnson, a UW professor of oceanography. “What she found was astonishing.”
The initial discovery of the methane plumes, by Susan Merle of Oregon State University, would lead to further discoveries of methane bubbles throughout most of Puget Sound. The findings have raised many interesting questions while providing implications related to the Puget Sound food web, studies of earthquake faults and even worldwide climate-change research. Johnson, Merle and other collaborators just published their first report on Puget Sound’s methane bubbles in the journal “Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.”
Nobody was even looking for plumes of bubbles in Puget Sound when Merle, a senior research assistant at OSU’s Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies, began looking at eight-year-old archived sonar data from the RV Thompson. Following the ship’s tracklines, she observed the data as the sonar picked up images of methane bubble plumes along the coast. The sonar was still on when the ship entered Puget Sound. Merle kept following the data, not realizing that the surprising bubble plumes being revealed by the recorded sonar were all the way into Central Puget Sound, off Kingston on the Kitsap Peninsula.
“Nobody knew that there were methane bubble plumes there,” Johnson said after confirming her findings. “I said, ‘This is incredible. I wonder if there are other data out there to verify this.’”
The UW’s smaller 72-foot Research Vessel Rachel Carson operates with a less sophisticated single-beam sonar, but the ship travels all over Puget Sound, carrying student as well as professional researchers, generally on short trips. Like the RV Thompson, the RV Carson records sonar soundings wherever it goes, and those data records are kept on file.
Johnson retrieved the data from 35 cruises and found much more evidence of bubble plumes.
“There were these bubble plumes all over the place,” Johnson said, “so I said, ‘Let me have a day with the Carson,’ and we went up to Kingston in 2019.”
An instrument package was dropped to the bottom to pick up samples of water and gas around the plumes. “Sure enough, it was methane,” Johnson noted.
Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation for “speculative” research that might lead to breakthroughs, Johnson and his colleagues began to map bubble plumes throughout Puget Sound. They found bubbles from the Tacoma Narrows to Everett and also in Hood Canal, some 350 plumes in all.
[iframe align=”right” width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/MpcjTh98u6k”%5D
Besides Kingston, the deep water off Seattle’s Alki Point contained a surprising number of the plumes, which are described as clusters of holes in the sea bed through which the bubbles pass. Johnson said one can get a general idea of the effect by turning a kitchen colander upside down and submerging it in a sink full of water to see bubbles emerging through the holes.
By using remotely operated vehicles, the researchers can record video of the bubbles emerging out of sharp, well-defined holes, 3 to 5 inches in diameter and roughly 3 feet apart. More than a few holes appeared to be abandoned, not producing any bubbles. Others intermittently released a series of bubbles that rose to the surface.
“You can tell which are active because of bacteria mats,” Johnson said, explaining that the bubble plumes can be a rich feeding ground for methane-loving bacteria, which grow around the holes.
In mapping the bubble plumes, it became clear that large numbers were aligned along geologic fault zones, primarily the ones running east and west, known as the Seattle, Tacoma and South Whidbey faults. Others lined up with smaller north-south faults, but the greatest number of bubble plumes occurred where the faults intersected, such as off Alki Point in West Seattle.
Much of this phenomenon has yet to be explained, Johnson said. One idea is that the methane gas is largely confined beneath a layer of clay and compressed sediments laid down during the last glacial period. If so, the methane may be rising up through cracks in the confining layer, cracks created through tectonic activity.
Methane gas is produced naturally during the breakdown of organic compounds found in all living things. Biogenic methane is produced during digestion by certain types of bacteria. Thermogenic methane occurs at higher temperatures, especially under pressure. (See discussion in Science Direct.)
Because of the lower temperatures in Puget Sound, Johnson said he suspects that the methane is from biological processes. Off the Washington and Oregon coasts, both biogenic and thermogenic methane are being released from thousands of bubble plumes, with pronounced clusters in a north-south band some 30 miles off the coast. This region is along the tectonic boundary where the Juan de Fuca oceanic plate collides with the North American continental plate.
High temperatures and pressures in this subduction zone leads to the release of fluids and methane gas. The vast majority of plumes are seen on the seaward side of the continental shelf in waters about 500 feet deep. Faults in this region, created by powerful subduction earthquakes, appear to be the routes for methane gas and fluids to escape to the surface.
An early hypothesis suggested that the bubbles in Puget Sound might be coming up from this underlying subduction zone, but that has not panned out. The chemical signature of the methane in Puget Sound, as revealed through isotope analysis, does not match that from sources deep underground, where samples can be obtained from terrestrial hot springs and water wells.
Because the methane feeds bacteria at the base of the food web, bubble plumes off the coast have been found to flourish with biological activity, including large populations of krill and fish, Johnson said.
“Fishermen know where these areas are, because they are biological hotspots,” he said.
How this methane may affect the Puget Sound ecosystem is yet to be studied in detail, Johnson said. The answer may depend on the location and specific physical and chemical conditions. While the methane is likely to increase biological productivity, it may also play a role in the low-oxygen conditions that can affect sea life and create other problems.
Because the bubble plumes seem to be coming up through faults underlying Puget Sound, seismologists might be able to use them to locate unknown geological features, identify changes over time, or determine which faults are active.
These findings also are relevant to climate change, as scientists search to find other natural sources of methane. Since methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, climatologists are challenged to identify all natural as well as human-caused sources in order to predict the effects of reduced emissions. (See “Methane Budget,” Global Carbon Project.)
Globally, between 35 and 50 percent of methane emissions are believed to come from natural sources, including wetlands, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Methane’s lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than carbon dioxide, but methane is more efficient at trapping radiation. That’s why this gas raises major concerns. Pound for pound, the impact of methane is 25 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, according to a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2019, methane was said to account for about 10 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.
The total amount of methane released from Puget Sound is relatively small when considering the total methane from many natural and human sources — including natural-gas leaks, raising livestock and garbage dumps. Still, Johnson hopes to launch a project that would estimate the total atmospheric emissions from the bubble plumes, while continuing to examine what is venting from all these holes. These new findings also point to ways to search for other natural methane sources around the world.
Related work by Shima Abadi, an associate professor at UW Bothell, involves analyzing the sound that the bubbles make and determining how that might relate to the amount of gas being released and other factors.
Other authors of the new paper are Tor Bjorklund, an engineer in UW oceanography; Chenyu (Fiona) Wang, a former UW undergraduate; Susan Hautala, a UW associate professor of oceanography; Jerry (Junzhe) Liu, a senior in oceanography; Tamara Baumberger, assistant professor at OSU; Nicholas D. Ward, affiliate assistant professor in UW Oceanography; and Sharon L. Walker of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.

December 31, 2021

Ecology, EPA now under the gun to adopt new water quality criteria for aquatic creatures

Long delays in updating state water-quality standards to protect orcas, fish and other aquatic species appear to have finally caught up with the Washington Department of Ecology and its federal counterpart, the Environmental Protection Agency.
In a court ruling this week, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman of Seattle found that Ecology has “abdicated its duties” to update certain water-quality standards, as required by the federal Clean Water Act. Meanwhile, she said, EPA has failed to meet its legal oversight obligations to ensure that adequate water-quality standards are protective of aquatic creatures.
The lawsuit, brought by Northwest Environmental Advocates, followed a petition filed by the group in 2013 seeking to get EPA to revise Washington’s water quality standards for aquatic species. The petition followed years of delay by the state. The standards, including numeric aquatic life criteria, place limits on toxic chemicals found in the state’s waterways. It took four years, but EPA eventually denied the petition, refusing to make a determination about whether or not the state’s existing water quality standards were consistent with the Clean Water Act.
In its denial and later court pleadings, EPA stressed its desire to support Ecology’s efforts to update aquatic life criteria. Ecology had discussed the update and even proposed it as part of the agency’s 2015-2020 strategic plan, but the work was never started. EPA admitted that Washington’s aquatic life criteria had not been updated for most chemicals since 1992, even though formal reviews and updates are required every three years, noted Judge Pechman in her ruling.
The judge’s order, issued Wednesday, requires EPA to determine within 180 days if the state’s current water quality standards are consistent with the Clean Water Act or if they need to be revised. If they are determined to be inadequate, the act itself requires EPA to promptly promulgate new regulations — unless the state adopts acceptable standards in the meantime.
Ecology officials acknowledge that the agency has been slow to adopt new aquatic life criteria. In fact, the required three-year “triennial review” has not been conducted since 2010. Ecology currently is going through a new triennial review, and the agency’s draft work plan lists the update to aquatic life criteria as a priority over the next four years.
“We have not conducted a triennial review since 2010 because we were in continual rulemaking efforts for the water quality standards,” states the introduction to the draft work plan (PDF 494 kb).
No doubt Ecology dedicated a lot of time and effort to other water-quality rules the past decade. Much public attention — including a legislative battle — was focused on human exposures to toxic chemicals, as Ecology worked through the long development of new human health criteria. The discussions largely revolved around fish-consumption rates for people who eat a lot of fish, along with what was considered an allowable cancer risk.
In a controversial move after Ecology completed its work, EPA refused to accept some of the state’s human health criteria, imposing stronger restrictions than Ecology proposed. The criteria were later reversed by President Trump’s EPA. Even today, the issue is not yet resolved, with a revised rule in the works from EPA in the midst of a lawsuit. (See Ecology’s timeline along with other background.) I have been following these issues since their inception in 2010, including a 2015 article in the Kitsap Sun newspaper.
Some of the rule-making that Ecology says contributed to delays:

Since EPA is in charge of enforcing the provisions of the Clean Water Act, Judge Pechman focused her attention on EPA’s failure to take charge of the situation, other than to encourage Ecology to get moving on the aquatic life criteria:
“The CWA (Clean Water Act) operates on a principle of cooperative federalism where states take the lead in setting WQS (water quality standards) with the goal of eliminating pollutant discharge into navigable waters to protect and enhance human and aquatic life,” the judge wrote in her order (PDF 228 kb). “States must create WQS specific to aquatic life and review them every three years to determine whether new or revised standards are necessary.
“But while states play a lead role in setting WQS, EPA serves as a backstop,” she continued. “Not only does EPA have to review state-adopted WQS, but it must also ‘promptly prepare and publish’ new WQS for a state ‘in any case where the administrator determines that a revised or new standard is necessary to meet the requirements of this chapter.’…
“So while EPA wanted to ‘work in partnership to efficiently and effectively allocate resources to address pollution and accelerate state adoption of new and revised criteria,’ nothing in the record showed that Washington was a willing partner. And certainly nothing in the record supports EPA’s belief that inaction would be an efficient or effective way of ensuring adequate WQS or complying with the goals and requirements of the CWA.”
The judge calls out specific criteria that EPA has recommended for updates, based on scientific studies, including aquatic life criteria for ammonia and copper. She did not accept EPA’s excuse that Ecology may have higher priorities or that EPA lacks the resources to undertake the rulemaking.
“This wait-and-see approach appears particularly ill-conceived in light of EPA’s recognition that copper pollution has an ‘adverse impact on salmonids,’ whose health impacts ‘critically important and endangered species throughout the Pacific Northwest,’” she stated.
Pechman noted that the letter denying the petition for rule-making contains no explanation about how EPA was “marshaling its limited resources to protect Washington’s waters or why simply waiting for Washington to act would be reasonable to meet the CWA’s goals. This undermines EPA’s position.”
The judge also rejected EPA’s argument that the update to Washington’s human health criteria — a related set of standards — would protect aquatic life. She cited EPA’s own recommendations for copper, which are 1,200 micrograms per liter for humans but a maximum of 4.8 micrograms per liter for aquatic life. Under those recommendations, what is considered safe for humans is 250 times higher than what is considered safe for protecting salmon from acute toxicity. (Chronic levels are considered even lower for aquatic life.)
Further, the judge points out, EPA should not assume that its national recommendations would be adequate for the unique species of Washington state — “such as Puget Sound’s Southern Resident orcas who are some of the most contaminated marine mammals in the world due to bioaccumulation through the food stock, particularly through Chinook salmon.”
The judge ordered EPA to make a determination on the adequacy of the state’s aquatic life criteria within 180 days, but she agreed to allow additional time if EPA can provide “specific, detailed explanations of why additional time is necessary and what tasks remain to be performed.”
How that will mesh with Ecology’s time schedule is yet to be seen. Most relevant staffers with Ecology as well as EPA were out this week for the holiday. I will invite them to contribute comments, concerns and additional context when they return.
Ecology’s draft work plan covering the next four years does not lay out a specific timetable for adopting aquatic life criteria. The agency has taken comments on four possible approaches to adopting new water quality standards:

Option 1: Stagger three rule-making by group (metals, organics, non-priority)
Option 2: Stagger two rule-making by group (all metals, all organics)
Option 3: Rule-makings for different groups of chemicals based on highest priority
Option 4: Review and update all necessary criteria in one rule-making

In bringing its lawsuit, Northwest Environmental Advocates said Washington state has revised aquatic life criteria for some toxic chemicals since 1992, but many remain less protective than EPA’s recommended levels. For 14 chemicals, Washington has no aquatic life criteria at all, whereas EPA has established maximum levels in freshwater to avoid acute or chronic toxicity, according to NWEA. In saltwater, Washington has no criteria for 11 chemicals for which EPA provides recommended standards, the group says.
Under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service have reviewed the adequacy of aquatic life criteria for the states of California, Oregon and Idaho. (USFWS covers freshwater species, while NMFS covers saltwater species.) For a number of chemicals, the agencies have found that criteria adopted by the states and approved by EPA are likely to jeopardize the continued existence of a threatened or endangered species, the so-called “jeopardy” finding.
To show that Washington’s standards are outdated, NWEA listed more than two dozen chemicals for which the state uses numeric criteria that are either higher or close to the levels found to be in violation of the Endangered Species Act.
“Levels of these and other toxic pollutants are among the reasons that EPA has long been concerned about the health of one of Washington’s most important waterbodies, Puget Sound,” states the legal complaint (PDF 490 kb). “EPA features the toxic contamination of Southern Resident killer whales, Pacific herring and harbor seals in Puget Sound on its website as evidence of its ongoing concerns about toxic pollution of Washington’s waters.”

December 20, 2021

Understanding the cold-water needs of salmon and helping them to survive

Salmon need cold water. This general statement is something I’ve been hearing since I first began reporting on these amazing migrating fish years ago. Cold water is a fact of life for salmon, known for their long travels up and down streams, out to saltwater and back. But colder is not always better.
Questions about why salmon need cold water and how their habitat might grow too warm or too cold led me into an in-depth reporting project. I ended up talking to some of the leading experts on the subject of stream temperature. Thanks to their fascinating research, I learned that temperature and food supply go hand-in-hand to dictate salmon metabolism, growth and survival. You can read my report, “Taking the Temperature of Salmon,” in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.

Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River, near Mount Si trailhead
Photo: Christopher Dunagan

Later in this blog post, I will touch on some new developments regarding temperature and stream conditions — including Gov. Jay Inslee’s latest initiative to help salmon by proposing new laws and regulations along with $187 million in next year’s budget request.
In the Northwest, we almost never need to worry that salmon streams will get too cold. Logging, farming and development have removed large amounts of streamside vegetation, allowing the sun to warm the waters, often to excessive degrees. While sunlight can increase the growth of tiny organisms and boost the food web, higher temperatures also accelerate metabolic rates, increase stress hormones and alter behavioral responses, as I described in my story.
When a section of a stream grows too warm, fish will seek out cooler water, often by swimming upstream to areas cooled by springs or snowmelt. As a change in temperature alters metabolism and behavior, the result can be problems with finding food and with increased threats of predation.
“Anybody who does stream work soon learns that fish are amazing,” Jonny Armstrong, a University of Oregon researcher, told me. “They don’t just accept the habitat they are given; they do all kinds of things to game the system.”
Jonny’s work in Alaska documented how a run of coho salmon moved into cool water to feed on sockeye salmon eggs. After getting their fill, the fish returned to warmer water to digest the food and grow faster.
I’m especially indebted to Aimee Fullerton, who helped me understand a multitude of biological processes related to temperature, as I searched for ways to explain the complex findings. Aimee is a research fishery biologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. She has been working in the Snoqualmie River, where temperatures grow warm enough at times to impair the growth and development of salmon and sometimes kill them if they cannot escape into cooler waters.
The prospects of climate change raise concerns about even higher temperatures in the future. Careful temperature measurements, combined with computer modeling, have helped researchers predict future temperature changes. Other experts are developing new strategies for maintaining cooler temperatures to protect salmon, as I outlined in the story.
Just last week, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced a new initiative that he will take to the Legislature next year. He hopes to boost salmon populations by improving stream habitat, replacing culverts and other impediments, and cleaning up polluted waters. Inslee also intends to address harvest, hatcheries and hydropower along with critical issues of predation and food availability.
[iframe align=”right” width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/j92VkN3TZvg”%5D
“There is no time to waste,” the governor said in a news release. “We have a choice between a future with salmon or a future without them. Salmon need immediate and urgent action to ensure their survival. That’s why, for the 2022 legislative session, salmon recovery is a top priority and have both policy and funding to help protect them.”
One of the key ideas that the governor mentioned during his news conference on Tuesday is to build and/or protect streamside corridors based on the height of trees, which provide shade to cool streams. (See video, embedded on this page, at 11:03-14:30.) The riparian corridor is also important in reducing toxic pollutants, bacteria and fine sediments that enter a stream.
The so-called Governor’s Salmon Strategy Update (PDF 1.4 mb) includes provisions for riparian buffers on agricultural lands, which has been a concern of Indian tribes throughout the region. Details have yet to be proposed, but a combination of regulations and financial support are likely.
The latest initiative grew out of the 2019 Centennial Accord meeting between state agencies and tribal salmon experts led by the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
“This is the first time we have seen legislation that would require landowners to protect riparian habitat,” said Dave Herrera, NWIFC commissioner and Skokomish Tribe policy representative who was quoted in a news release. “It is also groundbreaking because it includes incentives for landowners to create and maintain riparian zones, as well as regulatory backstops when compliance isn’t voluntary.”

Next year’s salmon-recovery legislation will be called the Lorraine Loomis Act, named for the late chairwoman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission who promoted cooperative efforts to save salmon. Budget details are included in a policy brief (PDF 1.4 mb) released by the Governor’s Office.
“We know the status quo isn’t working when it comes to salmon recovery,” Lorraine wrote in a column last year. “We know what the science says needs to be done, and we know that we must move forward together.”
On the regulatory front, the federal Clean Water Act calls for standards that protect aquatic life, such as salmon. Where temperatures are not maintained within an approved range, the waters are considered “impaired” — just as they are when bacteria become too numerous or oxygen levels drop too low for the aquatic species of concern.
Although I did not address regulatory issues in my story about temperature, it is worth noting that numerous federal and state clean-water regulations are undergoing changes. Some changes are the result of lawsuits; some follow statutory requirements; and some stem from the coming and going of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce environmental rules.
For example, the Environmental Protection Agency recently withdrew its approval (PDF 402 kb) for how the Washington Department of Ecology handles high temperatures in certain stream segments that grow naturally warm. The basic idea is that regulatory agencies need not seek out mitigation measures to cool such waters — even in areas too warm for salmon — if it can be shown that high temperatures represent the natural condition of the streams and that humans are not to blame.
The group Northwest Environmental Advocates first brought a lawsuit over such “natural conditions criteria” in Oregon, where NWEA contended that the state was allowing streams to remain dangerously hot by discounting the effects of humans. In this way, the group argued, Oregon was establishing new and higher temperature standards than allowed by existing regulations without going through a public review process. The higher temperatures should be subject to public review and federal oversight, including effects on endangered species, the group said. Federal courts agreed with that reasoning.
Although the Washington Department of Ecology rarely invokes natural conditions criteria for temperature, it must now review its practices and undergo federal oversight where experts believe that the natural condition of a water body would exceed established water-quality standards. Besides temperature, the review will cover criteria for dissolved oxygen. In some areas of Puget Sound, Ecology has determined that numerical water-quality standards would not be met even if no humans were around.
The methods of determining what the water temperature or oxygen level would be in the absence of human activity can become an elaborate exercise involving computer modeling. But Nina Bell, executive director of NWEA, argues that the process is important and should be open to public scrutiny. After all, she said, the outcome can determine whether unhealthy temperatures or oxygen levels persist or are reduced through mitigation efforts.
Other ongoing water-quality matters:

Revised standards for dissolved oxygen and fine sediment: The goal is to provide increased habitat for the early stages of development in the gravel used by young salmon and trout.
Updates to water-quality standards are in process, including potential revisions to human health criteria.
The so-called Triennial Review Process will spell out priorities for further changes, including updates for criteria used to protect aquatic species.
The EPA is reviewing federal jurisdiction over streams and wetlands and proposing a new WOTUS (Waters of the U.S.) rule.
The EPA is reviewing Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which authorizes states and tribes to approve or deny certain federal permits required under the CWA. In October, a federal court vacated a new rule adopted by the Trump administration that limited state authorities.

December 17, 2021

Modeling “the blob” in the Salish Sea

In late 2013, a marine heatwave that scientists dubbed “the blob” began warming the ocean throughout the Northeast Pacific, causing temperatures to rise almost 3°C above normal. The disruption severely depressed salmon returns. Whales, sea lions and seabirds starved, and warm water creatures were suddenly being spotted off the coast of Alaska. In Puget Sound, temperatures also jumped, but the effects of the blob here proved difficult to study because of the natural variability of the Salish Sea and the heavy influence of freshwater mixing and circulation in the waterbody. Recently, computer simulations from our partners at the Salish Sea Modeling Center have begun to help scientists understand some of the complexities.
A new paper in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science analyzes results of a five-year simulation of the Salish Sea Model to assess the blob’s effects. Among its more surprising findings, the model shows that increased inflow of freshwater and nutrients from rivers and creeks was “the primary driver of increased biological activity” such as algal blooms in Puget Sound during the heatwave. The authors say that is counter to earlier assumptions that river flows were unrelated and warmer water generated by the heatwave alone was responsible. They now hope the paper will prompt further studies. Were these higher-than-normal freshwater inflows merely a coincidence? Or do they indicate the influence of heatwave impact on hydrological processes? PSI affiliate and collaborator Tarang Khangaonkar is the paper’s lead author.
Khangaonkar, T., Nugraha, A., Yun, S. K., Premathilake, L., Keister, J. E., & Bos, J. (2021). Propagation of the 2014–2016 Northeast Pacific Marine Heatwave through the Salish Sea. Frontiers in Marine Science, 1836.

December 17, 2021

Modeling “the blob” in the Salish Sea

November 19, 2021

Recovery of Puget Sound species could hinge on better understanding of ecosystems

A recent report from the Puget Sound Partnership helps us understand the difficulty of restoring the Puget Sound ecosystem. What caught my attention in the State of the Sound report was that after 20 years of protecting and restoring streams, wetlands, shorelines and estuaries, we have not increased overall fish and wildlife populations, and some remain in a downward spiral. (Our Water Ways, Nov. 3).
Several reasons have been given for the disappointing findings, including ongoing habitat losses from an increasing human population in the Puget Sound region. Clearly, there is a need to find ways to accommodate growth while protecting the remaining functional habitats.

Click on image to bring up Vital Signs wheel with links to extensive information about indicators, including key messages, strategies, background documents and other resources.
Info: Puget Sound Partnership

At the same time, I would like to focus some attention on the restoration side of the equation. It seems we may not yet understand what it takes to restore habitats in ways that allow the food web to thrive, thus allowing increasing numbers of higher predators, such as birds, salmon and killer whales.
I recently wrote about some bug-seeding experiments underway in several streams that flow through urban areas in Seattle (Encyclopedia of Puget Sound, Oct. 21). For some reason, populations of aquatic insects known to provide food for salmon were not recovered to the degree expected, given efforts to restore the stream channel, remove invasive weeds, plant native vegetation and reduce pollution to improve water quality. As a result, researchers launched a project of transplanting important insects from a healthy stream. So far, results are mixed.
Katherine Lynch, urban creeks biologist for Seattle Public Utilities, points out that restoration projects are often limited in scope and extent.
“The reality,” she told me, “is that when you go in and do restoration work, you are only doing a short reach. These projects (in Seattle) are a way of exploring what works and what doesn’t.”
To restore or improve salmon habitat in a stream, the challenge is to understand what has been broken in a complex interactive system. Factors include water quality, water flow, clean gravel, and the intricate interactions of the food web — from microscopic organisms to large fish, including predators that eat young salmon.

Emily Schwabe, left, and other members of King County’s bug-seeding team transplant rocks with attached invertebrates to Seattle’s Taylor Creek this past August. // Photo: King County

Take water quality, for example. Until recently, nobody knew what was killing adult coho salmon that found their way into urban streams. Scientists tracked the problem to stormwater entering the waterways from roads and highways. Then last year, thanks to advanced analytical tools, researchers were able to identify the killer compound, which comes from a chemical found in tires. Until then, nobody seemed to know anything about this chemical, let alone thinking that tires might have lethal properties. (EoPS, Dec. 3, 2020).
The discovery opened a lot of eyes to questions about how to identify “clean” water and the prospect that unknown chemicals may be causing unidentified problems in waterways throughout Puget Sound and across the country. The tire-related compound has been found to have lesser effects on steelhead and Chinook but no apparent effects on chum or sockeye. Work continues on varieties of species that might be exposed to road runoff, not just in urban areas but practically everywhere.
The discovery that dying coho could be linked to a tire chemical, known as 6PPD, and its deadly oxidation product, 6PPD-quinone, raises even more questions about the sublethal effects of other chemicals not yet identified. Standard water-quality tests cannot capture the toxicity of unknown chemicals in a stream. Even biological tests, such as using aquatic invertebrates (EoPS), may not reveal the toxic effects on vertebrates — such as fish, birds and humans.
Besides water quality, water flow may be a critical ingredient in stream restoration. I’ve been hearing a lot lately about hyporheic flow — the flow through gravel beneath a stream bed — and its effects on temperature (EoPS, Aug. 19) and oxygen supply, even its ability to filter contaminants.
In Seattle’s Thornton Creek, an understanding of hyporheic flow led to an engineered design in which the stream channel was dug out — up to 8 feet in some places — and replaced with gravel, according to Paul Bakke, owner of a firm called The Science of Rivers who monitored the physical functioning of the project. Rocks and logs were lodged in the streambed along with an impermeable barrier that forced the flowing water deep into the underlying gravel. The water plunges down into deep gravel, coming back up and diving down again several times in each of two reconstructed portions of the stream. The gravel helps filter fine sediments from the stream, but the configuration of the channel allows these fines to be washed on downstream during high flows, Paul explained. Organic chemicals in the water adhere to deeper gravel, where large fractions of chemicals are broken down by microbes.

A restored section of Seattle’s Thornton Creek soon after construction in 2014.
Photo: Seattle Public Utilities

A team of researchers affiliated with the Center for Urban Waters in Tacoma evaluated the fate of 83 chemicals moving downstream in Thornton Creek. Included were the toxic tire chemicals. The hyporheic flow path substantially improved water quality, according to the findings published in 2019 in the journal Water Research.
After construction of the hyporheic zone, Paul found that the vertical flow rate in the new gravel was 89 times higher than in the previous streambed, which had been impounded by a heavy sediment load. In fact, the fresh gravel produced a flow rate 17 times higher than in a forested stream in the mountains of Idaho.
The newly engineered stream also included a floodplain, created by removing flood-prone houses from the area. During high flows, sediment-containing water moves from the stream channel into the floodplain, where lower water velocities allow the sediment to settle out. That helps to protect the stream channel from excess sediment.
According to Paul, the key to success was rebuilding the stream by carefully choosing the width and depth of the channel and floodplain. The new configuration balances the forces of erosion and deposition, thus maintaining the channel in a more natural condition. In addition to Paul, the lead channel designer was Mike “Rocky” Hrachovec, owner of Natural Systems Design. For details of the design, check out the article in Research Outreach or the more technical article in the journal Water.

In October 2018, a pair of Chinook salmon spawn in a restored section of Thornton Creek. // Photo from GoPro video: Chapin Pier, Seattle Public Utilities

The ability of the restored sections of Thornton Creek to clean themselves, increase oxygen levels and mediate temperatures has led to a healthier condition, despite the urban setting in North Seattle.
In 2018, four years after construction, a female Chinook salmon swam warily upstream. With a male Chinook standing by, she deposited her eggs, which were quickly fertilized by the male.
“They spawned,” Katherine said. “We had never seen salmon spawn in the project region.”
A lack of funding and the COVID-19 pandemic have prevented further in-person monitoring of salmon movements, but new methods of testing for the presence of salmon are being developed. Seattle officials hope that salmon populations will increase in Thornton Creek, where beavers have established a new dam on the project site.
Along with new research into stream ecology come better methods of stream restoration and the chance that salmon and other species will find a suitable home. The same can be said for such “adaptive management” in relation to shoreline, wetland and estuary projects that bring us closer to a true recovery of our native species.

November 19, 2021

Recovery of Puget Sound species could hinge on better understanding of ecosystems

Emily Schwabe, left, and other members of King County’s bug-seeding team transplant rocks with attached invertebrates to Seattle’s Taylor Creek this past August. // Photo: King County

A restored section of Seattle’s Thornton Creek soon after construction in 2014.
Photo: Seattle Public Utilities

In October 2018, a pair of Chinook salmon spawn in a restored section of Thornton Creek. // Photo from GoPro video: Chapin Pier, Seattle Public Utilities

October 28, 2021

Puget Sound meets 2020 bulkhead-removal goal; new indicators will chart the future

In a turnabout that offers hope for Puget Sound’s nearshore ecosystem, old bulkheads are now being removed faster than new bulkheads are being constructed, according to permit figures provided by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
In fact, officials with Puget Sound Partnership recently announced that the agency’s 2020 goal for reducing shoreline armoring had been reached — just barely — by the end of last year. Specifically, the goal, or target, was to remove more bulkheads, seawalls and other armoring (measured in length) than what was added from 2011 to 2020. One caveat: Not all armoring projects were captured in the permit data.

This old bulkhead on Sinclair Inlet near Port Orchard was once part of a residential property. It was removed two years ago to improve shoreline habitat. Photo: C. Dunagan

Now that we’re past 2020, new targets are in the works along with new Vital Signs and indicators of ecosystem health. Last year, 13 revised Vital Signs along with 34 indicators were approved by the Puget Sound Leadership Council, as recommended by staffers. The Leadership Council oversees the Puget Sound Partnership, the agency responsible for coordinating dozens of public and private partners in the recovery of Puget Sound. Reporting on the new indicators is expected to begin early next year.
Targets, which will define goals for future ecosystem improvements, are currently being developed for a few of the revised indicators and should be available before the end of the year, according to a timetable set by the Leadership Council. Work on other targets will continue through next year.
As for all the old indicators and targets, a final report on progress, or lack of such, over the past 10 years will be a major part of the biennial State of the Sound report, scheduled for submission to the governor next week. The document reports on every target with a discussion about the factors that have led to current conditions.
Many experts were surprised that overall shoreline armoring was reduced enough to meet the 2020 target, given that new construction outpaced removal for five of the past 10 years, based on permit data. In fact, from 2011 to 2013, nearly 2.5 miles of new bulkhead construction was matched with barely a mile of removal. But public efforts eventually kicked in to encourage and fund bulkhead removal while discouraging new construction. Last year, total removal reached 0.71 mile, compared to only 0.18 mile of new bulkheads that were built. (Details can be seen by hovering your curser over bars in the chart.)
Among the concerns with shoreline armoring, experts point out that bulkheads often occupy areas of the beach used by forage fish, which are important food for salmon. Hard seawalls also can reduce natural erosion and concentrate wave energy, leading to a beach devoid of sands and gravels, which forage fish use for spawning. Check out article on effects and ongoing coverage of shoreline issues in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.

Jeff Cordell and Erin Morgan survey sea wrack on a Puget Sound beach. Photo: Megan Dethier

Bulkhead replacement, rather than removal, still dominates shoreline construction, according to the permit data. Some 1.31 miles of armoring was replaced last year. That’s nearly 50 percent more than the total amount that was removed combined with new construction. Thankfully, experts say, an undetermined amount of that replacement work involved taking out hard vertical bulkheads made of logs, rocks or concrete and replacing them with a more natural “soft shore” design. Such soft-shore construction involves reducing erosion by sloping the beach and placing individual logs and boulders in strategic locations to attenuate the wave energy.
In April, the Washington Legislature passed a law that requires shoreline owners who wish to replace a bulkhead to consider designs that reduce erosion with the least impact to the natural environment. The law went into effect in July, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife intends to involve the public in drafting rules to carry out the new law along with a separate law meant to streamline permitting for habitat-improvement projects.
The long-term goal is to replace hard bulkheads with more natural systems capable of better protecting the environment without allowing damage to shoreline houses and other structures. Where homes are built close to shore on small lots, bulkheads may be the only feasible solution, especially in areas where the sea level is rising dramatically due to climate change. Sea-level rise varies from place to place, even within Puget Sound, depending on long-term ground movement. Waterfront owners are beginning to confront these issues, as described in articles in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.
In total from 2011 to 2020, the Department of Fish and Wildlife permitted the removal of 4.85 miles of shoreline armor while allowing 4.71 miles of new construction. Although that meets the target and calls for a celebration, WDFW officials are quick to point out that about 715 miles of shoreline remains hardened, so that a variety of habitat problems remain unaddressed.
These numbers also do not account for unknown shoreline modifications built illegally without permits. Such illegal construction and other compliance issues are now getting increased attention from WDFW.
New efforts seek greater compliance
As new laws and regulations come into effect, the Department of Fish and Wildlife has created a new Compliance Division to make sure people have adequate technical assistance for their projects and that they follow all legal requirements.
Four new compliance inspectors have been hired, three with state funds and a fourth with federal funding to focus on the Stillaguamish watershed in North Puget Sound. The Stillaguamish inspections are a special focus of the Pacific Salmon Treaty with Canada, because fishing in both countries has been limited by the low natural returns of salmon to the watershed.
Training for the first compliance inspectors is nearing completion, and they are expected to be in the field in early November. Their responsibilities involve working with property owners and checking on construction in both streams and saltwater shorelines. They will work in conjunction with local habitat biologists (the WDFW officials who sign off on hydraulic project approvals), as well as with uniformed enforcement officers from the agency.
Some new authorities for WDFW came out of recommendations to the Legislature by the Southern Resident Killer Whale Task Force (PDF 2.9 mb). In 2019, lawmakers strengthened civil penalties for violations of the state’s Hydraulics Code and related permits, thus moving the agency away from criminal citations for shoreline violations. The Legislature also allowed new permits to require mitigation for habitat damage caused by shoreline construction.

This year, other changes were made to require that replacement bulkheads, as well as new bulkheads, be designed to cause the least damage to the shoreline environment. The favored option is to remove a failing bulkhead and restore the beach to a more natural condition. If a shoreline structure is needed, natural (“soft”) materials are preferred over solid retaining walls. When solid walls are necessary, they should be located upland of the existing bulkhead wherever possible.
To help shoreline owners understand their options, experts have created a technical document called “Marine Shoreline Design Guidelines” along with a less technical booklet called “Your Marine Waterfront” (PDF 12.2 mb). Another change this year is to allow a streamlined process for habitat-recovery projects. A pilot program is getting underway to establish a revised permitting process for habitat improvements.
Randi Thurston, who is managing the new Compliance Division, said the incoming compliance inspectors, supported with the increased legal authorities, will provide “boots on the ground” when it comes to checking on permitted projects, investigating reported violations and launching patrols to locate and take action against construction done without permits.
At the same time, the Legislature has built upon the success of an older pilot program that provides financial and technical support to property owners who wish to remove shoreline armoring or work on other habitat-improvement projects. Originally developed in 2014 with federal funding, the Shore Friendly grant program continues to work at the local level throughout Puget Sound, operating through six county-based organizations along with the Northwest Straits Foundation, which serves six counties.
Shore Friendly is now funded by the state’s Estuary and Salmon Restoration Program, which also continues to fund competitive grants for individual projects. The Legislature this year has enhanced ESRP funding with $15.7 million directed toward three dozen prioritized projects (PDF 148 kb).

For further information about efforts to protect and restore nearshore habitat, check out WDFW’s webpage on Puget Sound recovery. For technical reports about the effectiveness of grant-funded projects aimed to improve nearshore habitats and other ecosystem conditions, check out Puget Sound Institute’s synthesis reports.
Strategic planning with new shoreline indicators

As the old indicators and their 2020 targets are phased out, new indicators are being designed to better describe ecosystem conditions. For that reason, the shoreline-armoring indicator — which measures construction and removal of bulkheads rather than habitat condition — has been removed from the list of future indicators.
The old indicator — net change in permitted shoreline armoring — may still be reported as a so-called intermediate measure of progress, but other habitat measures will be used to describe changes in shoreline conditions, according to Nathalie Hamel, who heads up Puget Sound Partnership’s Vital Signs reporting program.
It is important to understand that state permits don’t capture all shoreline construction taking place, Nathalie told me. In addition, the “replacement” of shoreline armoring can represent a wide variety of habitat changes, all lumped into one category. For example, replacement of a concrete wall with the right type of “soft shore” protection could bring a major habitat improvement. But if one concrete wall is replaced with another, the result could be no improvement at all. For these reasons, the measure of armoring construction, removal and replacement should be modified in some ways if it is to be retained, Nathalie said.
Despite the measure’s shortcomings and the newly approved indicators, reduction in shoreline armoring is still considered an important goal. That’s one reason that strategies to reduce armoring were retained in an updated Shoreline Armoring Implementation Strategy (with links), completed this past July.
The revised indicators (PDF 131 kb) of shoreline habitat, now listed as a Vital Sign called “beaches and marine vegetation,” still include an indicator for the total area of eelgrass in nearshore habitats. New indicators include:

Extent of forest cover in nearshore marine riparian areas,
Floating kelp canopy area,
Percent of feeder bluffs in functional condition, and
Short and long-term eelgrass site status.

While these conditions are generally measured as part of an agency’s ongoing work, some refinements are needed to report numbers and trends. Also, definitions of “functional condition” and “site status” may need to be clarified.
Other indicators that could be helpful in describing habitat conditions but still needing considerably more work include:

Drift cells in functional condition,
Miles of intertidal beach in functional condition, and
Understory kelp abundance and condition.

(Drift cells, by the way, refer to sections of a shoreline where sands and gravels move naturally in the same direction.)
At the larger scale, the revision of Vital Signs has retained six Vital Signs that report on biophysical measurements: birds, estuaries, freshwater, marine water, orcas, and toxics in aquatic life.
Just as “shoreline armoring” was converted to a Vital Sign called “beaches and marine vegetation,” the Vital Sign for “land development and cover” was converted to “forests and wetlands.” New indicators were added for every Vital Sign, as described in an 87-page report titled “Revisions to Puget Sound Vital Signs and Indicators” (PDF 11.9 mb).
Since human-related Vital Signs and indicators were developed after extensive studies before the latest update, no immediate changes were proposed to the Vital Signs for the statutory goals of “Healthy Human Population” and “Vibrant Human Quality of Life.”