Saving Seafood

A River Reborn: Restoring a Stronghold for Hood Canal Summer-Run Chum Salmon

August 28, 2026 — Threatened Hood Canal summer-run chum salmon represent a bright spot in Pacific salmon recovery. According to preliminary data from the Hood Canal Coordinating Council, average annual returns have nearly tripled since 2022. They’ve climbed from about 11,600 fish per year between 2018 and 2021 to roughly 32,600 between 2022 and 2025. That’s up from a low of less than 1,000 spawners in the early 1990s.

Scientists say several years of favorable ocean conditions have contributed to the recent rebound. Cooler ocean temperatures increase the food available to salmon and improve their survival at sea. But those conditions won’t last forever. Experts believe restoring river habitat will help summer chum remain resilient when the Pacific Ocean inevitably shifts back to a warmer phase in its natural cycle.

One of the healthiest summer chum populations is returning to one of the region’s most degraded rivers. The number of chum spawning in the Big and Little Quilcene rivers has quadrupled in the last 4 years. This despite 2 miles of the Big Quilcene being straightened, scoured of spawning gravel, and cut off from its floodplain.

NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Habitat Conservation, the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, and the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe are restoring salmon habitat at two locations on the Big Quilcene River–Moon Valley and the Lower One Mile. The projects will:

  • Create spawning and rearing habitat for Hood Canal Summer chum and threatened Puget Sound Chinook salmon and steelhead
  • Improve the Quilcene Bay estuary, where juvenile salmon make their first transition to salt water
  • Stop the flooding that has plagued the town of Quilcene for generations

The restoration should finish by September, just as the summer chum return to spawn.

“Restoring the Big Quilcene River has taken tribes, nonprofit organizations, local communities, state and federal agencies, and NOAA all working toward the same goal,” said NOAA Marine Habitat Resource Specialist Chemine Jackels. “Together, we’re giving one of Hood Canal’s most important summer chum populations a healthier river and a better chance to thrive for generations to come.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

MAINE: Costs, fish, property values are factors in the future of 3 Mousam River dams

December 29, 2015 — KENNEBUNK, Maine — A Kennebunk electric utility is weighing whether to remove the three lowest dams on the Mousam River or face potentially costly upgrades to restore fish passage to a river that once hosted large runs of spawning fish.

Trustees at Kennebunk Light & Power District have until March 2017 to decide whether to seek federal relicensing of three dams that the nonprofit utility owns on the Mousam River or propose several alternatives for the facilities. One option under serious consideration – and being pursued by local conservationists and sportsmen – is the removal of some or all three of the dams, including the large Kesslen Dam located in the heart of downtown Kennebunk.

The Mousam River is the only major river system in Maine emptying into the Gulf of Maine that lacks any methods for fish such as American shad, alewives or Atlantic salmon to bypass the dams, effectively blocking them from accessing more than 300 miles of watershed. Removing the three dams would allow the lower 9 miles of the Mousam River to flow freely – although an additional 12 dams remain on the upper stretch of river – and is part of an intense river restoration push in Maine.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Sturgeon Tag Find Brings NOAA Scientists to California School

October 30, 2015 — A green sturgeon tag is a real find, for a kid on the beach and for NOAA scientists.

Ethan Mora and Liam Zarri, researchers from NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, woke up early on a recent October morning to gather critical scientific data on green sturgeon. But they weren’t off to some remote research station; they were going to an elementary school in Napa to reward one of the students with $20 for finding a lost satellite tag.

Deja Walker, a third-grade student at Napa Valley Boys and Girls Club, was strolling with her grandparents on Stinson Beach near San Francisco in early October when she noticed some boys throwing around what looked like a toy. When the kids tossed it aside, she investigated and found the nearly foot-long tube offered a reward for its return to NOAA.

What Deja didn’t know was that she had found one of several satellite tags used by NOAA researchers to understand the impact of commercial halibut fishing on green sturgeon, one of nature’s most prehistoric fish.

Green sturgeon are bottom feeders, scavenging on invertebrates and small fish. They can grow to about eight feet in length and live for about 70 years. Although they spawn in fresh water, the adults may travel up and down the West coast from Mexico to Alaska.

Sturgeon have meandered throughout our oceans and rivers since dinosaurs roamed the Earth. But despite their long history, one population of green sturgeon in California may be edging closer towards extinction. The southern population, or those green sturgeon that spawn in the Sacramento River basin, were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 2006 because of the loss of historical spawning habitat.

Read the full story at The Fishing Wire