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| September 29, 2016 Shelton Mason County Journal |  |
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Thursday, Sept. 29, 2016 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Page A-31
The Hood Canal Salmon
Enhancement Group's
(HCSEG) Union River
Summer Chum Pro-
gram is having a ban-
ner year.
With a few weeks
still remaining in the
annual project, some
3,200 fish have already
been counted in the
Union River, marking
an ll-year high. This
year's count is already By KEVAN
MOORE
nearly three times
larger than last year's,
when some 1,232 salmon were
counted.
Each year, the program
runs Aug. 15 to Oct. 15 and
volunteers monitor an ad t
fish trap on the Union River
24 hours a day, seven days a
week, while collect-
ing critically impor-
tant data. Working
in pairs, volunteers
identify the species
and gender of each
fish before removing
the adult fish from
the trap and plac-
ing them safely up-
stream.
This collaborative
project works to re-
build threatened Hood Canal
summer chum populations in
the Union and Tahuya rivers.
When the project first began
17 years ago, HCSEG worked dangered Species Act in 1999. more astonishing when one
with the Washington Depart- HCSEG's work with WDFW to considers that available data
ment of Fish and Wildlife supplement the UnionRiver indicates that 100 or less fish
(WDFW) to rebuild the Union summer chum run began in were returning to the Union
River summer Chum popula- 2000 as part of the Summer River in the mid '70s and just
tion. That run became healthy Chum Salmon Conservation 42 fish were counted in 1982.
enough by 2003 that the re- Initiative, prepared by WDFW The folks at HCSEG are
turning adults were used as a and the Point No Point Treaty always looking for volunteers
donor stock to rebuild runs on Tribes, for this and many other proj-
the Tahuya River, where sum- This year's fish count by ects and activities. If you are
mer chum had been classified HCSEG and its volunteers isinterested in volunteering,
as "recently extinct." Supple- the highest it has been since contact Seth Elsen at (360)
mentation continued through 2005 when 5,976 fish passed275-3575, ext. 12, or email
2014, and both rivers have through the Union River trap. seth@pnwsalmoncenter.org.
seen over 1,000 salmon return .......................
annually on average, project period was the year• Kevan Moore is the corn-
Summer chum salmon in before that, when a whopping munity organizer for the Hood
Hood Canal and the Strait of 11,916 fish were counted inCanal Salmon Enhancement
Juan de Fuca were listed as 2004, :Those numbers and this Group. He can be reached at
threatened under the U.S. En- year'siarge return are evenkevan@pnwsalmoncenter.org.
AT LEFT: Madalyn Smith.
takes her turn on the
monkey bars earlier this
week during recess at
Belfair Elementary School,
BELOW: Solomone Nuku
pauses while upside
down, making easy work
of the hoops. ABOVE
MIDDLE: Sebastiana
Gaspar Diego, Madlynn
Daignault, Byrlie Biehl and
Xerxes Blacksmith-Meyers
negotiate a laddered
balance beam, perhaps not
meant for four at a time.
BELOW MIDDLE: Aleiah
Sciarni gets air while
jumping rope. BELOW
LEFT: That first reach for a
monkey bar is the toughest
as Byrlie Biehl ventures
across the jungle gym.
Herald photos by Tom Mullen