Episode 8: (Up) Chucking Chum for Birthday Fun!

How did the dead salmon get across the stream and other stories about chucking chum for birthday fun.

For this episode we meet up with Jenn, the Port of Tacoma Biologist and grilled her about some of the Port’s land stewardship and restoration work. We also learned about her idea of a great birthday present. Amy attempted to spell hhhuuuvvhhh (retching vomiting sound). And Jen shares more about the magic of the the hot spot tool…that’s a GIS tool! Finally, we share some information about how you too can participate in local restoration projects.

We share why the Port of Tacoma has been busy slinging salmon onto the shoreline of their restoration site. Who would have guessed that chucking chum into onto the banks of a stream would result in faster growing, bigger trees and other vegetation? Also, it turns out, if a biologist asked for your help on their birthday, you may want to be skeptical, especially if that request includes, “throw away clothes and gloves”.

Thanks to this impromptu study by a professor at the University of Washington, we have over 20 years of data that helps us better understand the impacts of slinging ocean nutrient rich salmon onto the shoreline.

We talked with the Port of Tacoma Biologist to learn more about some of the cool restoration work that the Port is currently involved with, different types of habitat mitigation sites and best of all, how they are helping salmon return to previously diked and channelized waterways!!!

Did you know that there are three different types of habitat mitigation?! When a business or industry has made an impact to the environment or will have an impact on the environment as part of development, our rules and regulations require that other habitat is restored or created.

SCIENCE NERD ALERT! Let’s talk about different types of habitat mitigation! What is habitat mitigation, you may be asking? Well, basically its when development impacts aquatic resources and then need to perform restoration work to offset the impacts. While we want to protect critical habitat from development, our rules and regulations allow for some mitigated impacts to our aquatic resources. There are three types of regulatory habitat mitigation.

CATS DISTRACT YOU WHILE WE TALK ABOUT different types of habitat mitigation

Compensatory Mitigation - Creating the habitat site during or after an impact to the aquatic resources - mitigating for what has already been done or is in the process of being done.

Advanced Mitigation - When you create another site, for a planned project, where you have already identified that the project will have an aquatic impact.

Mitigation Bank - Where a habitat site is restored, but the project sponsor hasn’t identified a project that will have an aquatic impact. Later the credits from a mitigation bank can either be sold to others that have projects that will have aquatic impacts or used to develop another site that will have an aquatic impact.

OK…now that we are through with some of the definitions…we also talked with the Port Biologist about a site they have been working on for quite a few years, Upper Clear Creek, which is a site where they are finally starting to see the fruits of their labors and it can be celebrated as a success!

They restored an artificially straightened ditch that ran through a former fallow farm field. There was not enough capacity in the channel during flooding events, so water (and salmon) would flow over the berm during high flows and then the juvenile salmon would become stranded in the field. As part of this project the Port reconnected the floodplain, created a more naturally meandering channel and provided refuge for baby salmon where they can rest up and get fat before going out into the dangerous ocean. This project took about 6 years to undo the prior work and recreate a more naturally functioning waterway! They are already seeing the success of this project. The very first fish they saw using the new channel after they breached the berm was an orca-coveted chinook. Since that time, they have seen lots of coho, chum and maybe even pinks using the site. There are rumors that bull and cutthroat trout are also using the new channels.

The Port has become a leader in Salmon Recovery, through their habitat restoration projects. The Port is partially bound to the work that they do because of the 1988 Land Trade Agreement with the Puyallup Tribe, which although probably caused great consternation for some in the past, has since been lauded as a great agreement for all.

We highly recommend that you follow the Diaries of the Port Biologist Blog, they are entertaining, engaging and hilarious….also, apparently there is no shortage of interesting stories coming out of the Port.

Want to learn more about the hot spot tool and how to use it to identify areas of concentrated findings? Hop on over to our GIS Blog to learn more!

We also discussed how you can get your hands dirty…maybe not chucking chum, but at least pulling some non-native vegetation or planting some native vegetation along waterways, which still helps salmon (and orcas!). There are volunteer restoration opportunities both with the Port of Tacoma and other local groups like Forterra, a non-profit that provides volunteer stewardship opportunities.

In addition, we touched on Earth Day, which is coming up on April 22! These cats think, if we want to make it out alive, we must act like EVERY DAY IS EARTH DAY! Earth Day itself, is a great day for you to get outside and enjoy all of the wonders of our natural world! It’s also a great day to get your volunteer on, by participating in a restoration or stewardship project. On Earth Day, you will likely also be able to volunteer with the chum chucker herself, potentially pulling weeds at the Gog-Le-Hi-Te restoration site.

WHACK FACT: Earth Day was started in 1970 as a way to raise public awareness about air and water pollution.  Throughout the years the Earth Day organization has worked to “broaden, educate, and activate the environmental movement across the globe.” We have done a lot to protect the environment since 1970, but it seems we are making some huge backsteps currently and those could be very costly.

Eventbright also has a variety of Earth Day related activities in the Puget Sound Basin (you can also search for other geographic areas!!!). Other volunteer opportunities include assisting Earthcorps (they provide tools and snacks and they still have openings for their April 20th event on Port of Tacoma Rd).

We hope you are able to get out and enjoy our Earth for Earth Day!

This is our first monthly installment of our podcast. After a few months of bi-weekly podcasts, we remembered that we still have to work and we would still like some kind of a life outside of work and this podcast. We are going to try the monthly podcasts until we are able to more efficiently develop, record and edit our episodes.

As always, please rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  Please let us know what you think at outalivepodcast.com or facebook.com/WillWeMakeItOutAlive. See you next month, but in the meantime, don’t be afraid to to get out there and do good for the Salish Sea Ecosystem!

Thanks for listening!