I lost one summer fish. I'm releasing a couple of chinook 'cause they look like feeders rather than jacks at the 20" minimum length.

https://fortress.wa.gov/dfw/erules/efishrules/erule.jsp?id=1994

How is the water clarity in the south canal? North canal has less clarity than the west point treatment plant aeration basins

I noticed that the last two weekends also Piper!

we have a place near Twanho State Park and it has that 'glacier run off' green look with poor visibility .

that's what we're seeing in the North end as well, glacier green... there have been some occasional tidal swings where the hood canal cloud pushes into puget sound and screws up visibility as well as fishing...

Algae? Harmful?

South canal has been experiencing some weird stuff the last 6 to 8 years.
Crabbing used to be dynamite, easy limits daily now its non existent.
I haven't caught a crab the last two years and the previous 3 years a few each season.
Hope the canal isn't turning into the 'dead sea'.
Oysters and clams are still strong,but I'm believing more and more in global warming.
Chum returns to Twanho creek are week.
Union river kings are barely hanging on.
On the positive side the canal north of the big bend things are better.
'OXYGEN DEPLETION' ?
Need Norm Dicks back in congress..........he did a lot for hoodcanal and Washington state. IMO!
chuck

For quite a while there have been water quality/oxygen issues in the Canal (more than a decade). The algae are a big problem, too. Worked with a guy who had been doing a lot of algae sampling there and was convinced that there was an occasional (close to annual but not every day) bloom of a specific alga that was killing many/most of Chinook outmigrants. It was very episodic and the problem was that after the dead fish were seen the algae had been dispersed by tides. He detected the same algae in lower BC and it's abundance seemed to correlate well with drops in sockeye.

There are some major issues going on in the water and it is too expensive to monitor. Leastways that's the excuse.

I've always wondered what the water quality of the southern canal would be like if the Skok had its natural flow coming out of the north fork.
There was also a thought that septic systems were and dumping dead chums were contributing water issues.
Lots of theories. I spent a ton of time on the canal during the 60's and 70's and don't recall the water being like it is now.
SF

Interesting question on the N Fk Flow. The diversion has not changed freshwater input much, if at all. The water goes in at the powerhouse. There was in interesting study about the impacts of the diversion and the really big one is that the Skok delta has shrunk. Less material is being brought down the river.

It would be interesting to look at timing of the FW input because storage in the enlarged Cushman means more water enters the Canal in summer than used to. Conversely, less may enter in winter/spring. Changes currents.

I think one of the biggest things adding to the increase in algae blooms is the decrease (generally through harvest) of clams. This is especially so for those clams that are subtidal and so were never harvested.

Before development and harvest, the shellfish in the Chesapeake Bay filtered the whole bay in a couple of days. Numbers now are such that there is one filtering per year. The Zebra Mussels in Lake Erie have shown what filtering can do.

I am further not so sure that the septic tanks and putting out those chum carcasses comes even close to what the pre-fishery/development input of nutrients was. But, especially with septics, it now comes year around, especially in summer with those long days and lights of light rather than in the cloudy fall/winter.

I'd have to believe in the summer, more water flows out of the north fork at Hoodsport then actually down the river itself. I may be wrong on that as I don't have figures to back it up.
I think Tacoma did increase the flows down the north fork a few years ago.

I mentioned the septics because I have access to several properties on the canal for fishing. In the winter and late spring, you'd be amazed at how high the water gets on the king tides. Septic systems in some areas are actually underwater.
Combine a big tide with a bunch of rain and a stiff s / sw wind and it is pretty ugly.
With the lack of flushing beyond the big bend, I wonder how much organic material builds up. It seems this is happening earlier each year, but I'm sure weather and lack of rain play a roll this year.
SF

What folks need to understand about septics is that the only thing they do to nutrients is put them into solution. Then, we put that water in the ground. If we're lucky, the plants growing over the drainfield suck em up. If not, they move with the water wherever it goes. If your drain field is close to water it gets there quicker.

The nutrients are not a problem, per se, IF we managed the Canal for planktivores. If we made sure that there were enough beasts that ate the algae. But, we gotta harvest those clams and oysters and mussels and fish whose fry eat algae and so on and so on and so on. Choices have consequences.

Interesting thought about the clam harvesting. From the number of tribal releases, it appears that the tribes are really hammering them. I don't think that was the situation before the Rafeedie Decision, or an any case before around 2000. Add in the growth in casino's and it falls right in to the general time line when problems might start to occur. I wonder if anyone has a traditional estimate of the biomass before the start of the problem and the current biomass.

I'd be curious to see what impact the geoduck harvest has had in the canal...

According to WDFW there are 5mil lbs harvested from PS every year... but there is no breakdown where they are coming from. Before the HC crash we used to see refrigerated trucks full of them hauled out of the Salisbury ramp. haven't seen them for a while now, but then we haven't had a salmon season for a while so i haven't been out to witness what gets taken out anymore.

Consider if the 5 million pounds was all subtidal and consequently never harvested. Even if you had a 1:1 conversion of food to clam, which is not really possible, that means one year's harvest had to consume 5 million pounds of single-cell algae to get that big. That's a lot of algae that don't create blooms and toxic/unpleasant conditions.

Some information from the geoduck harvest management plan.

The commercial harvest of geoducks targets the clam population in a relatively narrow band of subtidal Puget Sound; that area down to 70 feet. Keep in mind that geoducks can be found in quite deep water (to depths greater than 650 feet!). Reportedly in many areas of the Sound the deep waters with suitable substrate the bottom in waters are "paved" with geoducks.

The harvest plan targets an harvest rate of 2.7% of the biomass (that in less than 70 feet). By extension if the reported 5 million pounds of clam harvested is 2.7% of the biomass that shallow water biomass would be 185 million pounds. Have not been able to find a total biomass Puget Sound estimate but it would appear that 5 million pounds is a relative drop in the bucket of whatever that biomass may be.

BTW-
Yesterday (7/28) there 8 diver boats that appeared to be harvesting geoducks at Kingston.

Curt

You are still removing filtering capacity and there is a tipping point when the reproduction rate of the algae his higher than the rate of removal. We have also accelerated intertidal harvest, removed intertidal habitat to replace it with harbors or fill.

The management plan looks good in the isolation of geoducks; how does it integrate into what is occurring in the whole Sound?

Same as with our penchant for managing salmon on a species by species basis. Up in a study stream in AK they fish coho at 60%. Run is "stable" at that rate. If you escape no pinks you harvest 1000. If you escape 1.9 kg/sq m pinks you harvest 5-8000 coho plus you get immense benefits in the terrestrial ecosystem; at least if you ask the bears. So, which is the optimum coho management?

Same, I believe, with shellfish. You can harvest "sustainably" at a rate. At a significantly lower rate you can harvest sustainably and have fewer algae blooms. It's a choice.

I believe the nutrient load is much more than the septics. The urban areas truck sludge to Webb Hill where it is turned into fertilizer for the " farms."

It doesn't look as Caribbean as a week or so ago.

How deep do you suppose the Alge bloom goes? 70'?