Text transcript
Lake Sammamish kokanee video, 2008-2009 season

» Lake Sammamish kokanee video, 2008-2009 spawning season

Narrator: A November, 2008 walk through Lewis and Ebright Creeks by King County biologists turned up several kokanee returning to streams around Lake Sammamish to spawn. It wasn’t a huge number, but it was a hopeful early season sign especially since the 2007 run was virtually washed-out by high stream flows and flooding. In fact, winter of 2007 was the third-worst spawning run of kokanee in the 12 years King County and the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife have been monitoring it.

Biologists examined several kokanee carcasses found in streams for information they hope will shed more light on what’s happening to these imperiled fish.

Hans Berge, King County biologist: We’re dissecting kokanee, we were inspecting the otoliths, to determine the age and also the origin of the fish, whether or not they had anadromous parents. We were also taking a DNA fin clip sample, measuring the length to determine the size at maturity. The age information tells us their age at maturity. And we were checking for pre-spawn mortality of the females. Some of the fish coming back to the creeks are dying prior to spawning and we were making the determination whether or not those fish were successful in spawning prior to dying.

Narrator: Contrary to optimistic signs, hopes for a robust run did not bear fruit. Scientists continue to work to find the causes for this and preceding years’ small runs. Unusually low rainfall in November and December 2008 resulted in stream flows that may have been too low to draw spawners into the creeks. These fish may also be responding to a variety of cues to move their spawning time to earlier in the year, meaning seeing spawners in November rand December may be an ever more rare event. But time to figure out and fix the causes for low return is dwindling as spawners get fewer and fewer. There are increased concerns that another down year for returning kokanee could have dire implications to the species.

Hans Berge, King County biologist: This years return was not forecast to be super-large anyway, but what happened was we saw an earlier timing of the kokanee spawning period this year into early November through November and really completed before December, and what we found on those days were that compared to other years it looked like the run might be strong because it was so early, but instead it was early and gone before the peak time typically occurs, so the numbers were much lower than we had hoped, the total number of kokanee for Lake Sammamish was somewhere around 75 fish for the 2008-2009 spawning period and we’re at the point now where the numbers were so low that a hatchery intervention is not only likely but probably necessary to recover this species. A hatchery would involve collecting fish off the spawning grounds, taking them to a hatchery, rearing them to the fry stage and releasing them back into the natural environment to then rear in Lake Sammamish, mature and return to spawn in those tributaries or potentially back to the hatchery for a couple of generations. We’re not sure what the extent of the hatchery operation would look like at this time but it is likely that at least the early egg to fry survival stage is critical in boosting the number of kokanee in Lake Sammamish and the hatchery is probably going to be part of the recovery scenario.

Narrator: Friends of the kokanee will continue to work on plans to help the species rebound, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service will take a harder look at instituting legal protection for these local, landlocked salmon under the Endangered Species Act.

» Lake Sammamish kokanee video