Every year, the Upper Skagit Tribe holds a couple of community clam digs for tribal members of all ages.

“It’s important for our members to get out there exercising our treaty rights,” said Scott Schuyler, natural resources director for the Upper Skagit Tribe. “Our ancestors gave everything up for our treaty rights. We’d be doing them a disservice not to exercise those rights.”

Listen to a podcast about the tribe’s clam dig on Camano Island:

The celebration, marking the beginning of the fishing season, honors and protects the tribe’s fishing fleet. After a seafood feast of salmon, halibut, crab, prawns, mussels and clams, representatives from the Catholic, Shaker and Pentacostal faiths said blessings over the remains of four wild chinook salmon from the Skagit River.

The fish were wrapped in cedar boughs and carried by young men from the tribe. Following the ceremony, the young men and tribal fishermen released the salmon to all four directions.

Pictured: Tribal members Clay Day (from left) and Hawk Wilbur, assisted by Swinomish fisherman Joe McDonald, prepare to return a salmon to the water west of Deception Pass Bridge.

The YouthBuild students are studying the 1974 federal court decision, U.S. v. Washington (also known as the Boldt decision), which upheld tribes’ rights to fish in their usual and accustomed areas.

Photo: Jeremiah Johnny (left), Nooksack fisherman and cultural habitat technician, and George Swanaset Jr., the Nooksack Tribe’s cultural resources director, watch tribal member Jessica Williams try her hand at dip net fishing.

Listen to the podcast below:

Protecting the health of Quinault Indian Nation (QIN) tribal members and others is the main priority of harmful algal bloom specialist Jonnette Bastian-James.

Like other coastal tribes, QIN is helping to determine when harmful algal blooms (HABs) occur on the coast and how quickly they affect shellfish eaten regularly by Indian and non-Indian harvesters throughout the region.

James, a QIN tribal member, takes seawater samples year-round on five beaches from Ocean Shores north to Kalaloch where razor clams are harvested. Beginning in the spring, when levels of toxins harmful to humans can begin to rise, she increases sampling to twice a week at the beaches.

Back in the Nation’s lab in Taholah, Bastian uses a microscope to count the numbers of the algal plankton, pseudo-nitzschia, the micro-organism that causes domoic acid in shellfish such as razor clams. When there are high numbers or blooms of the organism, it can signal that the levels of domoic acid in razor clams may become toxic to humans, requiring the closure of razor clam harvest. At high levels, domoic acid can sicken or kill humans, though it does not harm the clam.

“By measuring levels of pseudo-nitzschia, we can get a sort of early warning as to whether we’re likely to see harmful levels of domoic acid in razor clams,” said Bastian. When the levels of pseudo-nitzschia rise, Bastian harvests a few razor clams from the beaches to test them for domoic acid levels.

QIN participates in the Olympic Region Harmful Algal Bloom (ORHAB) partnership created in 1999 to foster collaboration and cooperation among coastal tribes, federal, state and local management agencies, marine resource-based businesses, public interest groups and academic institutions.The ORHAB partnership investigates origins of blooms of toxic algae, monitors where and when the blooms occur, assesses the environmental conditions conducive to blooms, and explores methods to reduce HAB impacts on humans and the environment.

More recently, QIN and members of the ORHAB partnership participated in a West Coast summit meeting on HABs to provide input on creating a coastwide network that would improve the ability to predict HABs as well as pool resources, knowledge and new technologies.

As a QIN tribal member, Bastian’s work is particularly relevant to her. “I was raised on razor clams. My family and ancestors have harvested and eaten razor clams for generations. It’s an important part of our culture. We live off the land.”
Related: Razor Clams Important Culturally and Economically to QINQuinault Indian Nation Protecting Public Health

Jon Oleyar likens his stream surveying to the television show “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.” But rather than seeking evidence to solve a crime, the Suquamish Tribe fisheries biologist hikes Kitsap County’s streams for evidence of spawned-out salmon carcasses – particularly for coho.

“I feel like I’m part of a CSI team – Coho Stream Investigator,” he said. “Just finding them is the hard part. You have to think like a fish or a predator – ‘Where would I go to spawn?’ or ‘Where would I go to eat this fish?’”

He finds carcasses in various states, from fully intact to partially eaten. Based on his observations, he can figure out what happened to the latter, as he did on a recent survey.

“This is a perfect specimen,” he said of a discovered intact fish. “It’s still relatively fresh and a critter – probably a river otter – recently attacked and killed this female. By noting the absence of eggs and a worn tail fin, from digging a salmon egg nest in the gravel, I would say she most likely spawned prior to being killed.”

It’s the ideal scenario – the fish gets to spawn, the predator gets what it needs and Oleyar is still able to collect his sample. He measures its length, makes note of the gender and checks the snout for a coded-wire tag. The millimeter-long tag contains information about which hatchery it came from and when it was released. He also notes if the fish’s adipose fin is missing or intact. If it’s missing, it’s a hatchery fish; if it’s intact, it’s most likely a wild fish.

Carcasses play an important role in the wild and in science. The decaying fish are a source of food for animals and provide nutrients for important streamside vegetation that help improve water quality. For biologists, counting dead fish gives them a good idea of how many are coming back to their natal streams. It also helps determine species and stock compositions, habitat changes due to human or natural influence and geographic distributions of the fish from year to year. Oleyar has been conducting spawning surveys for tribe for more than 10 years.

“The intense work the tribe has done to find and count carcasses throughout the Chico watershed has paid off,” Oleyar said. “All this information has been very powerful in helping the tribe monitor the various salmon population trends over the last decade, understand their needs and observe how they react to changes to their environment.”

Since 1998, between the months of October and December, Oleyar has made weekly hikes up and down Kitsap’s numerous salmon-producing creeks, including Dickerson Creek. The stream is a tributary to Chico Creek, one of the most productive salmon streams in Kitsap County, with an average of 30,000 chum returning every fall to spawn.

Coho stock information is highly important to the tribe. Its extensive coho database is one of the strongest in the state and is often consulted by local and state agencies for management and other informational needs.

“In the 10 years we’ve been doing this, we sampled well over 10,000 coho alone,” he said. “Some hatcheries haven’t seen that many come back since they opened their facility.”

Oleyar was surprised when he found more than 100 coho coming back to Dickerson Creek in the 2008 fall season; normally only a handful return. At the same time, heavier-than-usual rain in late November and early December made it difficult for fish to get upstream. It also potentially wiped out salmon egg nests that had been dug by earlier returning salmon.

Still, the tribe’s intense dedication to monitoring these streams is paying off.

“Pacific Salmon Treaty Research Funding is instrumental to supporting this program,” Oleyar said “It’s the only way we can keep a good eye on what’s coming back to our area streams and continue to build on our knowledge of those salmonid populations by collecting key fish and habitat data.”

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For more information, contact Jon Oleyar, Suquamish Tribe fishery biologist, at (360) 394-8445 or joleyar@suquamish.nsn.us; or Jay Zischke, Suquamish Tribe marine fish program manager, at (360) 394-8444 or jzischke@suquamish.nsn.us; or Tiffany Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, information officer, at (360) 297-6546 or troyal@nwifc.org.

This mussel rescue was part of larger efforts to prepare the Elwha River for the removal of its two fish-blocking dams; the 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam and the 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon Dam will be removed starting in 2012. The new treatment plant will help filter out river sediment that will be released after the dams are removed.

“Mussels are a legacy population, meaning they can live for more than 100 years,” said Larry Ward, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s hatchery manager. “They also naturally help protect the quality of the water because they are filter feeders. While they are able to move around a little bit to find better habitat, the high levels of sediment expected in the river after the dams come down means they’ll most likely get wiped out. We’re trying to make sure they’re preserved.”

The mussels are temporarily stored in one of the tribe’s hatchery raceways. Various strategies are being considered for releasing them back into the Elwha River.

Freshwater mussels are excellent indicators of water quality. While also a source of food for tribes, mussel shells are used for regalia and other traditional uses.

Mussels must depend on other species in the ecosystem in order to survive. Recently hatched larvae attach themselves to fish, such as chinook salmon, a common species in the Elwha River. After feeding off the gills of host fish for a few weeks, the larvae drop off into the streambed and continue their development.

“The lack of mussels above the dams could have something to do with the fact that there are no salmon above the dams either, because fish can’t get past the tall structures,” Ward said. “Once the chinook colonize upriver after the dams are removed, we hope to see a population boost in mussels and other species too.”

The project was supported by the Lower Elwha Klallam and Jamestown S’Klallam tribes, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey.

For more information, contact: Larry Ward, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe hatchery manager, at (360) 457-4012 or lward@elwha.nsn.us; or Tiffany Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission information officer, at (360) 297-6546 or troyal@nwifc.org.