Washington State Salmon Recovery Lead Entity Program honored outstanding volunteer citizens from Orcas, Lopez and Shaw, among eight honorees from all over the state, as part of their 10-year anniversary celebration at the State Capitol on March 10.
A group of more than 44 volunteer local beach seiners were recognized for outstanding and ongoing volunteer efforts supporting critical salmon recovery projects that assess the use of the San Juan Islands’ nearshore environments by young salmon.
Many of the seiners are WSU Beach Watchers working with Fisheries Oceanographer Dr. Tina Wyllie-Echeverria to gather data critical to the understanding of salmonid resources and habitat use. They travel via a 20’ research vessel in all types of weather, 10 times per month, from March through September sampling seasonal salmon visits at various sites. They set more than 500 beach seines on nine islands where they sampled thousands of fish including pink, chum, Coho and Chinook salmon. They also sample prey species for fish, marine birds and marine mammals such as sand lance, herring, surf smelt and shiner surf perch.
Another group of local beach seiners are a part of community citizen science teams organized by Kwiaht on Lopez and Waldron Islands. This group helped with the project above and conducted a study of the prey used by juvenile salmon. These volunteers, working in small groups with microscopes on evenings and weekends, identified and counted more than 4,000 bits of fish, crustaceans, insects and other prey items and developed digital taxonomic keys and photo atlases for reference and training future volunteers. More than 35 Lopez, Orcas and Waldron volunteers participated in extensive specialized training, field and lab work, contributing over 1200 volunteer hours.
The 44 citizen volunteers combined contributed more than 2400 hours to salmon recovery efforts. Both teams plan to monitor juvenile salmon abundance and prey use over the next few years.
Another San Juan County award winner was Jim Slocomb. He was honored for his efforts as a dedicated salmon recovery project volunteer. He began donating time in 2001 with the Forage Fish Habitat Assessment project and has continued ever since. Slocomb has recently volunteered hundreds of hours in order to complete the complex Geographic Information Systems (GIS) modeling required for the Salmon Habitat Protection Blueprint project. Slocomb donates the use of his boat for survey and monitoring work and has volunteered hundreds of hours sampling water quality in San Juan County.
