By Aidan Hersh
AmeriCorps Environmental Stewardship Coordinator
As Summer turns to Fall and our short Washington window of sunshine comes to an end, the time comes for us to get cozy and bundle up for a long winter season (or if you’re me, to keep wearing socks and sandals every day). For our local salmon population, however, it’s the beginning of the most crucial and physically exhausting part of their life cycle: spawning. Many of the streams that these salmon return to run right through our residential neighborhoods, providing excellent opportunities for the public to view and learn about salmon.
Every Fall, NSEA hosts Salmon Sighting events at a selection of these salmon-bearing streams to engage and educate the community about the value of wild salmon and why protecting them is so important. This year, from the end of October to late November, NSEA held nine Salmon Sightings throughout Whatcom County, engaging over 500 people. We were able to see fish at all but one of the events, with a few sites being particular highlights. One such highlight was Oyster Creek, which runs close to Taylor Shellfish Farms and is the natal stream of a large population of chum salmon. On November 5th, we had 130 people attend our event and observe dozens of spawning salmon, many of which were no more than several feet away from the viewing area. Participating in the organization of these events is always valuable, not least due to the excitement they bring to community members, especially children who may be seeing wild salmon for the first time. Salmon Sightings are integral to our mission of inspiring the community to care about and understand salmon, and they will continue to be a cornerstone of NSEA’s stewardship programs.
Salmon play the crucial role of being a food source for a variety of organisms, and this Fall we decided to host an event that would highlight one of these relationships. On December 17th, we held an Eagle Sighting and Photography Workshop with two local photographers, Rich Bowers and Alan Sanders, and a former Audubon Society board member, Chris Brewer. Together with the 10 attendees, we drove out to the Nooksack River and observed about 70 bald eagles over two and a half hours. It was a unique experience that emphasized the vital relationship between these two iconic species of the Pacific Northwest. Be sure to check in next summer for more opportunities to see native salmon and learn about their ecological significance.