.Fin undergoing repairs and a new paint job by Renaissance Auto Design. She appreciates the attention!

Image provided by Neil Wood.

The Salmon in the Schools program gives elementary students the opportunity to experience the salmon life cycle up close in the classroom! Students receive lessons from the Salmon Coalition learning about the salmon life cycle and salmon's relationship with the environment, animals/plants, and humans. The program finishes with the release of the coho salmon into a stream when they are in the parr phase into a stream. While giving these lessons, we especially enjoyed seeing students inspired to do more research outside our lessons on various salmon topics.

May 3rd and May 4th are the days to GIveBIG for the Salmon in the Schools program! This statewide giving event happens once every year. We appreciate the support we have received so far and would like to continue giving students positive memories of raising salmon in the classroom. Even though GiveBIG begins on the 3rd, you can still donate between now and midnight of May 4th. GiveBIG today to contribute to this amazing education experience for elementary students on the North Olympic Peninsula!

It’s a great time of year to get out on one of our local rivers. In addition to enjoying the exuberance of spring in local riparian areas, it is also a great time of year to spot a spawning steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) or, at least, a redd that these elusive creatures have left behind. Steelhead, the anadromous form of rainbow trout, are often lumped in with the five species of Pacific salmon that inhabit the Pacific Northwest but there are several important differences between them. The three most significant are that steelhead spawn in the spring, while salmon spawn in the fall; steelhead are iteroparous (can spawn more than once) while Pacific salmon are semelparous (die after spawning); and steelhead have much more diverse life history patterns (pathways to reproduction) than salmon.

 Steelhead in this region generally spawn from late January through mid June with a peak in April. The biggest advantage to spring spawning is that the incubating eggs and fragile alevin (newly hatched eggs) experience more mild hydrological conditions while in the gravel than their salmon cousins. Our biggest floods of the year typically occur from November through January during rain on snow events that can be devastating to salmon eggs and alevin. The trade off to spring spawning is that the hatched juveniles have a shorter growing period before winter and high flows set in again, potentially reducing survival through their first winter.

Anybody that has spent time on a salmon bearing stream in the fall has probably smelled the unmistakable odor of rotting salmon. Visit that same stream during the steelhead spawn and you likely won’t see a carcass let alone smell dozens of rotting ones. This is partially because steelhead generally exist in smaller numbers than salmon but is mostly due to the fact that steelhead do not necessarily die after spawning. This life history strategy is known as iteroparity and the outmigrating steelhead that are returning to the ocean after spawning are referred to as kelts. Rates of kelting vary widely, with studies showing up to 70% of a population returning to the ocean after spawning while some populations show rates lower than 10%. Repeat spawner rates are much lower (~5%), indicating that making it back to the ocean is the easy part of spawning more than once in their lifetime. Interestingly, the majority of kelts and almost all of the repeat spawners are female. This is not surprising when you consider that once females lay their eggs there is little incentive for them to stick around, as opposed to the males who are hesitant to leave the party, hoping for one more dance.

The ability to repeat spawn is one of the reasons that steelhead have such a diverse suite of life history strategies. Most salmon only have a few different ages at maturity. At one end of the spectrum, pink salmon only have one. Every pink salmon is two years old when it spawns, which is one of the reasons why we see the incredible boom and bust cycles on the Dungeness River. At the other end of the spectrum, Chinook salmon have about ten different age pathways to maturity, with some spawning after just a year and the mythical 100 pounders of the Elwha once reaching, perhaps, eight years of age. Steelhead on the other hand can express over 30 different age pathways to maturity. They don’t even need to go to the ocean before spawning (they are trout after all) or alternatively they can spend multiple years in freshwater and then multiple years in salt water and then return to salt water a few times in between spawning migrations. Every combination between these two extremes is also possible. This incredible age-at-maturity diversity lets steelhead spread their eggs into multiple baskets, protecting them from bad ocean years or freshwater floods.

Age at maturity is not the only diverse life-history strategy that steelhead exhibit; they also show variable migration-timing patterns. These two patterns are commonly referred to as summer and winter run. Summer run fish typically enter freshwater from late June through early October in an unripe condition. They then overwinter in the river, usually in cool shaded canyons in the upper reaches. They spawn from early winter through early spring. Winter run steelhead enter the river in ready-to-spawn condition from December through May, and typically spawn within a month of entry in the lower to middle reaches of the river. Although many rivers have both summer and winter run populations, summer run populations are more numerous in the interior Pacific Northwest, where long migrations are required to reach the spawning grounds, while winter run populations are the norm on the west side of the Cascades, where fish have a much shorter distance to travel. In some rivers the temporal and spatial distribution of summer and winter run steelhead can overlap.

One local river that exhibits both summer and winter run steelhead and a wide diversity of life history strategies is the Elwha River. For 100 years, the Elwha River dams blocked 90% of the river’s habitat, rendering it inaccessible to salmon and steelhead and decimating their populations. While the Lower Elwha Tribe and its many allies worked patiently to achieve removal of the dams, the Tribe’s hatchery program was instrumental in preserving steelhead genetic diversity. During the high sediment impact period of dam removal, returning adult steelhead were translocated from the hatchery facility to clear water tributaries in the middle river, where they successfully spawned and helped initiate the recolonization process. The formerly inaccessible habitat above the dams remained in pristine condition for fish due to the protection afforded by its status within Olympic National Park, and it is now clear that steelhead are re-colonizing much of that habitat and showing significant success with natural spawning. The total number of steelhead returning to spawn each year is increasing, the steelhead population as a whole is expressing a broader range of life history patterns, and the spatial distribution of spawning fish is expanding throughout the watershed.

The total population size of winter run steelhead is measured by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe using multi-beam imaging SONAR technology. You can think of this as a flashlight of sound that spreads both horizontally and vertically as it moves across the river. The shoebox sized unit is mounted on an aluminum ladder at the edge of the river and captures movie-like imagery of everything that happens in the cone-shaped cross section of river that it monitors. It can capture clear imagery even in turbid water and operates 24/7 during the steelhead run except during periods of extreme high flow. The SONAR can accurately detect fish moving by, but it cannot differentiate what species they are. Therefore, as part of the monitoring, scientists also conduct weekly non-lethal tangle net surveys in the vicinity of the SONAR site to apportion raw fish passage to species-specific passage. Since dam removal, the total number of winter run steelhead returning to the Elwha each year has increased from an average of ~1,000 fish to over 2,000 fish. The SONAR has also been recording fish entering the river in good numbers in January when it used to record only a few that early in the season.

The tangle net surveys not only provide information on which species of fish are swimming by the SONAR, but they also provide an opportunity to collect several other important pieces of information related to life history diversity. A scale is taken to determine the age of the fish, when it first migrated to the ocean, and whether it is a repeat spawner. The fish is also checked for an adipose fin (small vestigial fin between the dorsal and caudal fin) to determine whether it is of hatchery or natural origin. All hatchery steelhead in the Elwha will have come from the Elwha Tribal Hatchery and will have had their adipose fin clipped off when they were juveniles. A small fin clip is taken from the caudal (tail fin) for genetic analysis to confirm if the fish is a summer run or a winter run (although the time of year is the primary indicator of this trait). Just a few weeks ago, a 24 pound male winter steelhead was sampled near the mouth of the river, by far the largest steelhead sampled since dam removal and a good indication that life history diversity for steelhead on the Elwha is increasing.

Steelhead are also utilizing more of the watershed to spawn as we reach the ten-year milestone since dam removal. The upper 90% of the watershed was previously inaccessible and now steelhead are utilizing most of that available habitat. Summer run steelhead have been recorded beyond Camp Wilder, deep in the backcountry of Olympic National Park. Winter run steelhead continue to push their way up previously inaccessible tributaries in the middle reaches of the river.

Although we are still in the early stages of Elwha River salmon and steelhead recovery, it is an exciting time to be a steelhead in the Elwha River. The incredible diversity of life history traits that steelhead are capable of expressing are reemerging at an astonishing speed as these amazing fish recolonize newly accessible habitats and increase throughout the watershed.

A: False! Like salmon, Olympic Peninsula winter steelhead populations have sustained steep long-term population declines. Indeed, population data compiled by fisheries scientists suggest declines in wild steelhead between 38-77% from historical numbers on major OP rivers.

A: True! Steelhead were initially introduced into Michigan’s Au Sable River (a Lake Huron tributary) in 1876. From this initial introduction and subsequent introductions to other Great Lakes tributaries in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, steelhead quickly colonized the Great Lakes. Similar to steelhead in the Pacific, Great Lakes steelhead migrate up tributaries to spawn, treating the massive lakes as their ‘ocean’. Young steelhead then migrate out to the lakes, exhibiting the same characteristic silver/chrome colorization as they do in the Pacific Ocean.

A: True! Unlike Pacific salmon who can spawn only once, steelhead are capable of spawning 2-3 times. In fact, up to 60% of steelhead in some rivers are repeat spawners.

Want to catch up on NOSC's restoration projects and accomplishments from 2021? Check out the 2020-2021 Annual Report by clicking here!