What was your first memory with salmon?
My father was a sports fisherman and there were always salmon being consumed at our house. At age 8, Joel remembers fishing in front of the house on Dabob Bay.
You are a second generation commercial fisherman, was it always the plan to follow in your families footsteps?
Who's plan? My parents always felt the kids should become white collar workers. I didn't plan to be a full time fisherman until after I had worked for a few years as an engineer. That is a long story, but it was a quick career adjustment after I understood what an office job really was like.
When and how did you first hear about the North Olympic Salmon Coalition? In what ways have you been involved?
My father was a dues paying member of the old Wild Olympic Salmon restoration group; I'm guessing that was in the late 1980's? I became involved with NOSC because of Sarah Doyle. I needed a house and cat sitter when I went off fishing in the summer, a mutual friend introduced Sarah to me as reliable, clean, energetic, outdoorsy... and inexpensive, the clinching attribute. Sarah house sat for me for a couple years before I began to volunteer to count coho, the first year being in 2011. This was after my father passed and before my mother passed. In retrospect, the timeline sounds as if I should have been volunteering with NOSC sooner, but providing elder care for both parents consumed all my time.
I have counted coho, participated in plantings, and have been a contributor.
What role do you serve in helping Washington State fisheries to be sustainable?
I've been a member of the City of Seattle Public Utilities citizen's advisory committee on water supply (1990-1991). The City wrote a Habitat Conservation Plan for the Cedar River watershed and the city water intake, we provided input on the HCP.
I've been a board member of Save our Wild Salmon since 1994. SOS is committed to the recovery of salmon and steelhead in the Columbia and Snake Basins.
I've been a volunteer for the Pacific Fisheries Management Council's Habitat Committee since early in the 2000's. The Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) is obligated under federal law called the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation Act to comment when federal or state action will have significant adverse impact on Essential Fish Habitat (EFH). The Habitat Committee both looks at federal and state activity to see if they are having adverse impacts and to prepare comment letters when such impacts are significant on EFH. The geographic scope of the PFMC is from the Mexican border to the Canadian border and out 200 miles (known as the Exclusive Economic Zone) as well as salmon EFH that includes rivers, riparian habitat and estuaries. We have prepared reports and comments on the Northern Olympic Peninsula Independent Watersheds coho habitat; Columbia and Snake River hydroelectric dam operations (primarily spills); Klamath Basin water issues and the removal of the four Klamath dams; Sacramento basin habitat issues, including water temperature control out of Lake Shasta and Oroville Dam settlement issues regarding flow and water temperature.
I am a board member of the Coastal Trollers Association, a fisheries advocacy group. Our activities include marketing, season setting, and political engagement.
Why do you feel that boosting our runs of wild-born salmon is so important?
Healthy populations of wild salmon define the ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest. There is no ecosystem impact that does not affect salmon- from logging, house development, road building, farming, forest fires, oil spills, pesticide spraying, etc. If you care about where you live and want it clean and healthy, then you care about salmon populations and how to keep them healthy.
Salmon of course return nutrients from the ocean to the land. A large proportion of the nitrogen and carbon found in standing trees in salmon rich watersheds comes from the ocean, via salmon. At one time, salmon migrated up the Columbia and Snake Rivers into Canada and as far as Nevada. The transfer of nutrients sustained populations of humans and every other terrestrial plant and animal for thousands of years. Remember, the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, it wiped the interior clean of life. Life recovered and grew rich in large part, because water soluble nutrients were replaced by migrating salmon. The same thing happened in Western Washington. Our soils around here are terrible, gravely, rocky, thin, weak... what have you. And it rains like crazy all the time. Again, the water soluble nutrients are replaced each year by salmon swimming up to spawn and distributed by raccoons and coyotes and the odd bear. We could not have trees like the old growth first cut in the region without salmon.
What is your favorite fishing story to tell?
My favorite fish story is about the restoration of salmon to Carkeek Creek in Seattle. It is an urban stream that fall chum runs of a couple hundred. It is a teaching tool for the Seattle School district for environmental education. It is reachable in a couple hours to hundreds of thousands of people. It's headwaters are under a Dick's restaurant on Holman Way. It has salmon right where political decision makers live, and thus has an impact on them, because of proximity far in excess of our NOSC projects.
To be sure, NOSC does highly successful work. But, we do not have that many people who know about us, and thus we don't have strong political clout. Our story of recovering coho in Chimacum Creek from 15 individual salmon to the several hundred annually is a tremendous success story, but it is mostly understood by fish geeks and professionals. By way of contrast, fall chinook migrating into the Snake River in 1992 numbered 950 or so. The last couple years they have numbered 30,000 or so, granted many of them are hatchery derived. Still, a growth of 30 times is remarkable for both places. However, that did not happen where politicians and big money lives, thus it isn't as politically significant.
Anything else you want share with our readers?
Volunteer work with salmon is one of the most rewarding community activities one can participate in. Granted, working with children is some folk's cup of tea, but if you are more outdoorsy, your efforts in habitat restoration will show results quickly and dramatically, as long as Sarah has carefully planned it. Returning to sites after a couple years to see the trees you've planted is a cool experience. Seeing plantings done by others, grow to provide shade and water quality enhancements is inspiring. Seeing salmon on streams when you do spawning surveys is a life affirming activity.
Thank you, Joel, for the amazing life history and the work you do to save our wild salmon!
Base funding for the RFEG program comes from a grant from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, a portion of state commercial and recreational fishing license fees, and excess egg and carcass sales administered by the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife
