I wonder if this project will be of any help those offspring of the Stilly chinook that actually make it out of the river.
SF

https://vimeo.com/366614933?ref=em-share

I wonder if a better option would be to divert most of the Stilly north through Stanwood and out Deception Pass instead of south through Port Susan and Puget Sound. It would help the Stilly fish avoid some predators and the slough is already there. It would also protect returning adults from the Tulalip Bubble fishery which is WDFW's whole point of closing the Stilly to gamefish. Right? Just thinking out loud and probably wouldn't be enough in the end anyway.

C'man, I think it's just the Sauk that flowed down the Stilly, not the Skagit. But yes, that probably goes a long ways in explaining genetic similarity.

I heard that, for a long time, the Skagit was actually below the Baker. Some sort of block there.

I would really like to see a good post-glacier changes in drainages. Here is what I have heard of, mostly from geologists.

S Fk Nooksack went down Friday Creek to the Samish.

Upper Skagit, Cascade, Sauk, Suiattle, Whitechuck all went to the Stilly.

White (and of course Cedar) were Duwamish Tribs.

White, previously, went down S Prairie.

Crescent Lake and Sutherland were one and flowed into the Elwha.

I know other small creek movements, but those were the biggies that I have heard of and am sure there were more.

I guess the biggest, from the perspective of genetics, evolution, and stock formation is that 15,000 ybp Puget Sound did not exist; it all flowed out the Chehalis. As the glaciers retreated , fish moved in but no PS stock is "older" than 15K years.

I believe it is the case that when the Sauk made the turn to the west at Darrington to flow down the North Fork Stillaguamish valley the Suiattle portion of the Sauk continued to flow to the Skagit.

CM-
No doubt that the mass spawning salmon -pinks, chums, and sockeye can move a lot of fine sediment. I don't think increased numbers pinks would help the Stillaguamish Chinook. The conditions on the Stillaguamish are such there is more or less steady stream of material moving downstream. With every freshet the redds are re-buried by fine sediment and with every flood event there is significant bed load scour; both minimizing egg survival. I remember 20 years ago during the spring watching the pits of steelhead redds filling with sand in matter of a few days.

The stream bed of the Stillaguamish has been so altered that currently there is a huge over-lap between the pink and Chinook spawning areas. During pink years as soon as a Chinook begins spawning it is immediately joined by dozens to hundreds of pinks. Guessing that the pinks are attracted to the disturbed gravel. Again 20 years ago while mapping Chinook redds on 16 mile section of the North Fork Stillaguamish on non-pink years weekly surveys are more than adequate to identify each Chinook redd; nearly every redd would still have a active spawning or broom tail female on it. Those females would typically remain on the redd for 10 days or so. On pink years it was necessary to survey 3 times a week to catch a chinook female on the redd. On big pink years there would be so much pink spawning on top of the Chinook redds that the only chance of being sure of identifying a Chinook redd was to catch the female on the redd. During those pink year's doubt that the female Chinook redd resident time was 3 days. The constant pink harassment would lead to exhaustion and death for the Chinook in that time.

Curt

The question should be whether the pinks benefit Chinook by cleaning the gravel rather than making surveying harder. I suspect that the carcasses are still available and could be marked.

If the use of spawning salmon to remove the sediment is too difficult and causes too many conflicts then what is the next best way to get the sediment out and clean the gravel to improve egg-fry?

CM -
My point was that the habitat changes had simplified the habitat. Historically we would typically find Chinook spawning in deeper, faster waters with large substrate. The pinks more typically along the stream edges and up on the bars in shallower waters with slower flows. With the massive bed load inputs common on the Stillaguamish that sort of selection for separate spawning areas/habitat types between the two species is reduced.

My other point was the massive pink spawning with the Chinook alter the female Chinooks behavior and significantly reduced the time she guarded her redd site. Typically changes from the normal behavior has some associated survival reduction. Something similar was seen on the Cedar river in the Chinook/sockeye interactions. It may not be an accident that as the sockeye numbers decreased the Chinook production increased.

Curt

Interestingly, the Salmon Creek chum had differential stream life. In years of large escapements the stream life was about half that of low escapements (even/odd).

This fish evolved, in the Stilly, with huge pink runs and the Chinook evolved together. In the Cedar, where there were no sockeye (but there were pinks pre-diversion) the Chinook may not have had to deal with the competition.

The Cedar is also benefitting by now having Chinook spawning above Landsburg. The habitat may be better up there.

Just corroborated that. How interesting.

http://faculty.washington.edu/dbooth/Chap_2_Restoration_book.pdf

The last glacial ice sheet had Puget Sound and Juan de Fuca Strait locked in ice between ~18K and ~15K years ago. The meltwater from the southern flank made its way to the Pacific down the Black River valley into the Chehalis and Grays Harbor.

Once the next Vashon ice sheet wipes out all of humankind in Pugetropolis, mebbe Puget Sound salmon can finally make a victorious comeback.

Pretty much what it'll take!

Doc, the fact that all of PS drained through the Chehalis is why that mainstem is now viewed by hydrologists as way "undersized". It used to carry a lot more water. Was one of the "ahah" moments to realize just how much things have changed in a short time. And how plastic and invasive salmon are.

We are now seeing the same thing in the High Arctic and Pacific Salmon invade the north slope of Canada. Eventually, will they cross the continent and move into the Atlantic? Will Grey Whales do the same and restore the Atlantic Greys?

Looking at the tidal ChehaIis from say Montesano down, I've always thought it was an underfit river with lots more capacity.

But to think of all the south-face Puget/Vashon glaciers draining thru the tiny Black River really stretches the imagination. Current flows are a trickle in comparison.

Speaking of current flows, imagine what the Chehalis volume looked like back then. Modern society has built so close to the entire river corridor. Hard to imagine how big the historic flood plains were 10-15K years ago.

And we're all up in arms about modern day "flooding"... J F C!

It wasn't the Black, or just the Black. The nose of the glacier, at it's maximum was probably towards Teninio. Remember, Black Lake, at the time, was likely under ice. I think there were multiple outlets. Plus, there were some lakes downstream of the nose.

This is the reference I found...

"As the ice sheet retreated from its maximum position, meltwater drained into the axis of the Lowland but could not follow what would become its modern drainage path north and west out the Strait of Juan de Fuca, because the strait was still filled with many hundreds or even thousands of meters of ice. Instead, meltwater was diverted south along the margins of the retreating ice sheet, coalescing into ever-broader rivers. Channels and locally broad plains of the Vashon recessional outwash now form much of the landscape in these ice-marginal locales and recessional river valleys. These landforms can be traced downstream to their glacial-age spillway out of the Puget Lowland, south through the valley of Black Lake near Olympia and then along the valley of the modern Chehalis River west to the Pacific Ocean."

It is hard to imagine if you just look at the current size of the Black River (Creek?), but if you just look at the topography of the area between Black Lake and the Chehalis River, there is plenty of room for a lot of water to move through. There kinda has to be.

We also need to remember that when the glaciers were retreating there was a pretty good lack of trees. Another aspect is that sea level was maybe 100m lower so the rivers have filled a lot of the valley.

At the same time did the land rise as the weight of the ice was removed as occurred in Iceland? It would be interesting to see an animated portrayal of those geological forces at work over time for, say, the Chehalis valley.

Meanwhile back at the RMP....Stilly is not only problematic at constraining to 22% for wild fish in all fisheries, but at low hatchery forecasts, the RMP has an additional constraint kicking on the hatchery fish in SO. US fisheries. Currently the hatchery fish are ad clipped and tagged as part of a PSC ER monitoring program. Since the hatchery fish are ad clipped they become the "target" in MSFs and consequently MSFs become the bad guy and not a way of protecting fish from exploitation. Not a sunny future on several fronts.

The lengths we'll go to to protect mixed stock salmon fishing in WA, the least conservative style of stock management. But that's OK, we'll save Stilly Chinook by closing the summer gamefish season for steelhead and cutthroat that are pursued mainly by fly fishermen. Gee, the Stilly has been closed to fishing for Chinook my entire life, which is quite a while. If that was gonna' save Stilly Chinook, it shoulda' worked by now.

The Stilly will probably just be closed permanently before one of the idiots in charge of everything spends 5 seconds actually considering any other idea. I think they would rather save the money for enforcement and waste it somewhere else. And they need to let people kill any Stilly chinook that might be caught at the Tulalip Bubble.