SALMON WATCH
The annual salmon watch on Fauntleroy Creek is officially under way. Tides are quite favorable (12'+) during much of the watch season, typically through November.

Veteran watchers are signing up now for shifts. If/when they start seeing spawners, we'll put out the call for new volunteers. Watchers take half-hour shifts during the five hours after high tide and come as often as their lives permit.

If you'd like to be on the call list for new volunteers, contact Judy Pickens (938-4203 or judy_pickens@msn.com).

COHO COMING & GOING
May is salmon-release season and May 2011 was a busy one. A record 641 students came to Fauntleroy Park as part of 17 field trips, releasing an estimated 1,977 coho fry into Fauntleroy Creek. Just over 80 percent of the preschool - fifth-graders had reared their fish from eggs as part of the Salmon in the Schools program. The other 20 percent released fry reared by watershed volunteers.

As those fish were getting used to running water, coho smolts were heading for Puget Sound after a year in the creek. For the first time, volunteers documented smolts in two soft traps, one as they were leaving the park and the other as they passed through the fish ladder downstream.

A surprising 147 left the park between late March and the end of May but only 36 of those reached the lower trap. As the watershed council looks into what might have caused such high attrition, we celebrate the upper creek's ability to provide healthy habitat for more than 7 percent of the fish released there. (Typical survival in the wild is 1 - 2 percent.)

Amaya, Morgan, and Sam got to see how much the fish they released into Fauntleroy Creek last spring had grown. The large fish in the bucket is a coho smolt, on its way to saltwater, and the small fish are fry the Little Pilgrim School students released this year.

SMOLTS ON THEIR WAY OUT

Monitoring began in late March to document the number and size of coho smolts leaving the creek for saltwater. One trap is located at the fish ladder in the lower creek and, for the first time, a second trap is located in the upper creek. Volunteers are checking both traps daily and, as of 4/11, they have counted 17 in the upper trap and 4 in the lower.

Just over 2,000 fry reared by schoolchildren are released every spring in Fauntleroy Park. Having two traps will enable a comparison between how many of those fish mature to smolt stage to leave the park and how many of them survive the journey to the lower creek. In between are a long, dark culvert and a six-foot vertical drop.

Out-migration monitoring will continue through April and into May as long as smolts are present.

FISH ARE GROWING
A dozen schools started raising salmon in classroom tanks in early January, and the resulting fish are now big enough to feed on their own. Each school received 200 coho eggs to take care.

Students are old enough in most of the schools to take significant responsibility for fish rearing. They use simple test kits to monitor pH, ammonia, and nitrite levels, plus they monitor temperature closely because warming of the tank can quickly kill the fish.

If all goes well, each school will have at least 175 fat and frisky fry to release into Fauntleroy Creek in May 2011.

INTO THE WILD
Salmon release season concluded May 27 (2010) after 15 field trips to put coho fry into Fauntleroy Creek. A total of 497 youngsters, from preschool through fifth grade, released 2,160 fry into the wild and explored habitat near the creek.

The fry will spend almost a year in fresh water, growing into fingerlings and then smolts, ready for two years in saltwater. The monitoring of out-migration that began April 1 documented 25 smolts leaving this year. That's several more than last year.

Experts estimate the coho survival rate from fry to smolt in the wild is 1 percent to 2 percent. With 25 surviving out of the 1,936 released in 2009, Fauntleroy Creek habitat is in the game, at just over 1 percent.

Interpretive Sign
If you haven't already, take a look at our first-ever interpretive sign about Fauntleroy Creek, newly installed along the pedestrian walkway to the ferry.

Funded by the last of a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Federation, the sign focuses on the "reach-to-the-beach" project but also provides basic information about the creek and watershed. Most striking is a watercolor of the reach by nationally known artist Karen Brussat Butler (mother of creek neighbor Elizabeth Butler).

Special thanks to Elizabeth for getting the project done, to Ware Lantz for fabricating a no-fail mounting, and to ferry-terminal staff for doing the installation and kindly agreeing to "host" the sign.

Plant give-away

Steve Richmond (left), owner of GardenCycles and a contractor working in Fauntleroy Park, instructs park neighbors in how to install native plants.  The plant giveaway on Feb. 22, hosted by Steve Bomkamp (second from left), boosted the number and diversity of native plants in several residential landscapes - plus Fauntleroy Church - around the rim of the park.  Photo courtesy David Follis.

Spawning Salmon Movie

10/25/2011

A SERVICE OF THE FAUNTLEROY WATERSHED COUNCIL

Artwork Credit:

Here interpreted by artist Richard Sleight, the "salmon-trout's head" ovoid captures the central importance of salmonids (both salmon and their trout cousins) to northern Coast Salish culture. It is often used as the eye in a complex image, with proportions varying according to space and the artist's intentions.