Lopez residents gathered once again at the Community Center on Jan 21 for an evening of food and fun that accompanied Kwaiht's annual report on the previous summer's salmon seining at Watmough Bight. Volunteers gather salmon and other fish in a net every other week, and then quickly measure, count and examine them, mostly the chinook, before releasing them back into the water. A small DNA sample is taken, and seasoned volunteers also collect the stomach contents of the fish, which are later analyzed at a lab. During the several summers this research has been going on, (both at Watmough and at Cowlitz Bay on Waldron,) the data accumulated has indicated interesting trends in the diet of the salmon.
Chinook seem to prefer smaller fish as their primary source of food, as these provide the largest "bang for the buck" from a nutritional standpoint. If not enough fish are available, crab larvae are their next choice, with insects filling the gaps. In previous summers, sandlance have been the most common fish eaten, but in 2011, the chinook consumed large quantities of herring. According to Kwiaht's Russel Barsh who presented this annual report, the chinook arrived earlier in the season while the herring - thicker in girth than the sandlance - were still small enough for the herring to consume. When the salmon arrive later, or the herring are bigger, they have to be content with sandlance.
Russel pointed out that most forage fish restoration in the islands is currently focused on smelt and sandlance, with virtually no emphasis on herring. Based on the most recent survey results, he feels that it is important to give much more thought to how herring spawning could be increased in the Islands. The largest herring-spawning grounds in the Salish Sea are off Cherry Point (another reason to be actively involved in the coal terminal plans!) But by the time those herring find their way to the Islands in the summer, they may be too big for the chinook.
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