In this 1979 photo, a Quinault Indian Nation tribal member walks the beach in heavy foam near Duck Creek, several miles north of Taholah. Larry Workman, QIN

The new NWIFC Magazine features the efforts of coastal tribes to track harmful algea blooms in the Pacific Ocean and their impact on wildlife and fish stocks.

From the magazine:

In only the second incident of its kind reported in scientific journals on the West Coast, thousands of seabirds died on the Washington coast as the result of the effects of a harmful algae bloom.

…

Tribal members and technical staff from the Hoh, Makah and Quileute tribes, and Quinault Indian Nation (QIN) were among those who helped record the magnitude of the problem. They counted and identified bird carcasses and gathered water samples for testing. Results were used by ocean researchers to assess
the event.

For some tribal members, the bird die-off wasn’t anything new; they’d seen similar events in the 1950s and 1960s.

You can download the pdf version of the magazine here and read it here at scribd.

The archives of the NWIFC Magazine are here.