Salmonids

At the request of the City of Mukilteo, students and staff from the Learn and Serve Environmental Anthropology Field (LEAF) School at Edmonds and Everett Community Colleges surveyed Japanese Gulch and Big Gulch for spawning salmon from November 1 through December 15, 2013. The survey demonstrated that adult coho have returned to Japanese Gulch for the second year in a row after the completion of a significant stream restoration project removing four major barriers to salmon migration. The survey also confirmed reports of chum returning to spawn in Big Gulch. Both streams provide valuable salmon spawning habitat in an urban setting.

In the expanding salmon industry, many farmers use production methods that could result in poor welfare of the fish at various points
of their lifecycle. We have reviewed methods used for producing salmon for food with the aim of identifying and drawing attention
to factors likely to affect farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) welfare. In addition to water conditions and high stocking density at
sea, other issues are important for fish welfare. Handling and transport of salmon between fresh- and seawater phases and before
slaughter can have severe negative effects and research should continue to seek improved methods. Stocking densities in fresh- or
seawater have substantial effects on the welfare of salmon and a reduction in densities should be considered in order to reduce fin
damage in particular. Currently used feeding systems result in starvation for some fish and fin damage for others, hence new systems
should be developed. Some on-demand feeding systems improve welfare. All farmed fish should be stunned prior to slaughter, not
left to die of asphyxia. Carbon dioxide and electrical stunning methods do not always stun salmon humanely. The widely used methods
of percussive stunning, manual or automatic, must be precise to effectively stun large numbers of fish. Welfare outcome indicators,
such as fin damage, morbidity and mortality rate, should be used in standards and laws relating to salmon welfare.
Santurtun, E., Broom, D.M. and Phillips, C.J.C. 2018

In an 1855 treaty at Point Elliott (bǝka’ltiu or Mukilteo, WA) the United States promised Coast Salish nations that they could continue to hunt and fish in their usual and accustomed places in perpetuity; yet logging, stream realignments, military installations, pollution, and transportation  infrastructure over the following century disrupted and impeded salmon access to local streams. A railroad spur built in the late 1960s to connect the waterfront railway to a Boeing plant above Japanese Gulch introduced additional barriers and by this time, if not sooner, humans had entirely blocked salmon access to the stream in the very shadows of the historic treaty. Students from Edmonds Community College in Lynnwood, WA. joined a collaborative effort in 2012 led by the City of Mukilteo and Snohomish County Airport, in consultation with Tulalip Tribes and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, to remove four major barriers to salmon migration in Japanese Gulch. As its name suggests, this stream is not only important to the First Peoples of this land but also to descendants of immigrants from Japan who lived in lumber company housing in the gulch during the early twentieth century.

Urban streams and their associated riparian zones in western Washington contain important fish and wildlife habitat in the midst of extensive human activities. Community college students are enhancing their own learning while assisting cities, counties, and tribes with monitoring of plants and animals in these urban ecosystems. This report summarizes the results of in-stream salmon spawning, wildlife, and water quality surveys in two streams in the heart and edges of Mukilteo conducted between 2012 and 2018. Students, faculty, and staff from Edmonds CC have conducted these surveys in Japanese and Big Gulches in response to requests from the City of Mukilteo and Snohomish County Airport. The data collected help municipalities preserve and sustain places and species of significant cultural importance to Coast Salish tribes, Japanese-American communities, and other local residents.

The surveys demonstrate that small numbers of adult coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch) have consistently come to Japanese Gulch to spawn for seven consecutive years. Chum returned to Japanese Gulch for just one out of seven years of observation. While stream restoration projects have opened the gulch to salmon, spawning in this stream is under threat from an invasive species, bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamera), that has overrun prime spawning habitat in restored sections of the stream.

Big Gulch, like Japanese Gulch, originates at Paine Field Airport and flows to the salt water of Puget Sound. Coho returned to Big Gulch for four out of six years of monitoring in this watershed. Chum (O. keta) have returned for five out of six years of monitoring but the numbers have been quite variable and were dramatically lower this year than the previous year. The variability of salmon runs in Big Gulch coincides with a similar volatility in water quality samples, suggesting that water quality remains the primary threat to the viability of salmon in this stream.

For the past five years, researchers from Edmonds CC have monitored the gulches for evidence of a troubling phenomenon of salmon, especially coho, dying before spawning in urban areas of the Puget Sound basin. For four out of five years, service-learners have documented pre-spawn mortality in Mukilteo streams. All three necropsies of female coho in Big Gulch in 2018 revealed evidence of pre-spawn mortality. In fact, three out of the four years that coho returned to Big Gulch, necropsies revealed 100% pre-spawn mortality resulting in a cumulative rate of 87.5% over five years of monitoring. Surveyors at Japanese Gulch found no dead female carcasses for analysis this year but over the same five years, pre-spawn mortality rates average just 40% in the recently restored stream. These local rates of pre-spawn mortality range from substantially to moderately higher than predicted by new prognostic models developed by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for forecasting premature deaths.

Recognizing salmon are part of a larger ecosystem, researchers from Edmonds CC document and maintain lists of wildlife observed in each basin. Prior to the beginning of this project, Mukilteo Wildlife Society already had a robust list of wildlife their members had recorded in Japanese Gulch. Teams of students, staff, and faculty have confirmed 13 mammals and 22 birds previously reported and added three each of additional mammals and birds as well as one amphibian to the list. At Big Gulch Saltwater Anglers of Mukilteo had documented seven species of mammals and birds in the 1990s, all of which researchers on this project have confirmed. They have also added 11 species of mammals, 17 species of bird, and one each of amphibians and reptiles (see appendix B). 

This year, 228 students, staff, faculty, and community members contributed to service-learning activities as part of this project, these include salmon surveys, wildlife monitoring, water quality investigations, and eMammal data entry. 24 of these researchers returned from involvement in previous years, while 204 were new to the project. Overall, 805 students, staff, and community members have contributed to this community-based service-learning partnership over the past seven years. Participation has grown in recent years as faculty and students at Edmonds CC recognize the value of assisting local municipalities in endeavors to restore and conserve fish and wildlife habitat, especially in culturally and ecologically sensitive areas. This project serves as an example of the value of community-based citizen science in filling the monitoring and assessment gap in current salmon restoration projects throughout the Pacific Northwest.

In an 1855 treaty at Point Elliot (bǝka’ltiu or Mukilteo, WA) the United States promised Coast Salish nations that they could continue to hunt and fish in their usual and accustomed places in perpetuity; yet logging, stream realignments, military installations, pollution, and railroad and road infrastructure over the following century disrupted and impeded salmon access to local streams. A railroad spur built in the 1960s to connect to a Boeing plant above Japanese Gulch introduced additional barriers and by this time, if not sooner, humans had entirely blocked salmon access to the stream in the very shadows of the historic treaty.

Students from Edmonds Community College in Lynnwood, Washington, joined a collaborative effort in 2012 led by the City of Mukilteo and Snohomish County Airport, in consultation with Tulalip Tribes and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, to remove four major barriers to salmon migration in Japanese Gulch. As its name suggests this stream is not only important to the First Peoples of this land, but also to descendants of immigrants from Japan who lived in lumber company housing in the gulch during the early twentieth century.
Urban streams and their associated riparian zones in western Washington contain important fish and wildlife habitat in the midst of intense human activities. Community college students are enhancing their own learning while assisting cities, counties, and tribes with monitoring of plants and animals in these urban ecosystems.

This report summarizes the results of an in-stream salmon spawning survey in two streams in the heart and edges of Mukilteo conducted from October 23, 2017 through December 20, 2017. It also reports on wildlife surveys using tracking and camera traps and on monthly water quality sampling from January to December 2017. Additionally, this report draws comparisons and contrasts with previous wildlife surveys that began as early as January 2012 and expanded in scope later in that year to include salmon and in more recent years in water quality. Students, faculty, and staff from Edmonds CC, along with community volunteers, have conducted these surveys in Japanese and Big Gulches in response to requests from the City of Mukilteo and Snohomish County Airport. The data collected help these municipalities preserve and sustain places and species of significant cultural importance to local Coast Salish tribes, Japanese-American communities, and the larger mainstream culture.

The surveys demonstrate that small numbers of adult coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch) continue to return to Japanese Gulch for the sixth year in a row. For the first time in six years of monitoring, college students have also observed adult chum (Oncorhynchus keta) spawning in Japanese Gulch. Chum have made their first documented appearance since the removal of barriers that had excluded salmon from the stream for approximately fifty years. The viability of coho and chum runs in Japanese Gulch, though, is under threat from an invasive species, bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamera), that has overrun prime spawning habitat in restored sections of the stream. For the third out of five years, coho have returned again to Big Gulch, a neighboring stream that like Japanese Gulch, begins at what is now Paine Field Airport. For the fourth out of five years of monitoring in this second stream, chum have again returned to Big Gulch, this year in the highest numbers yet recorded.

Urban streams and their associated riparian zones in western Washington contain important fish and wildlife habitat. This report summarizes the results of two seasons of in-stream salmon spawner surveys from November and December 2013 and 2014 and three years of wildlife surveys using tracking and camera traps from January 2012 to December 2014. Students from the Learn and Serve Environmental Anthropology Field (LEAF) School at Edmonds Community College conducted the surveys in Japanese and Big Gulches in response to requests from the City of Mukilteo and Snohomish County Airport. The surveys demonstrate that adult coho have returned to Japanese Gulch for the third year in a row after the completion of a significant stream restoration project removing four major barriers to salmon migration. The surveys confirm reports of salmon (both coho and chum) returning to spawn in Big Gulch and provide the first evidence of coho pre-spawn mortality in this stream. The surveys add six news species to lists of known fish and wildlife using Japanese Gulch and confirm an additional 27 species reported by other sources. This report initiates a new list of 34 species documented in Big Gulch, 30 of which had not been reported in other consulted sources. Collectively, the surveys demonstrate the ecological value of these two urban streams as fish and wildlife habitat. With contributions from 122 students, faculty, staff, and community members over a three year period, this project also demonstrates the value of citizen science and community engagement to the education of community college students and the endeavors of municipalities to protect fish and wildlife habitat.

Urban streams and their associated riparian zones in western Washington contain important fish and wildlife habitat. This report summarizes the results of an in-stream salmon spawning survey from October 23, 2016 through December 16, 2016; wildlife surveys using tracking and camera traps from January to December 2016; and monthly water quality sampling from January through December 2016. Additionally, this report draws comparisons and contrasts with previous surveys that began in January 2012. Edmonds Community College students, staff, and volunteers conducted the surveys in Japanese and Big Gulches in response to requests from the City of Mukilteo and Snohomish County Airport.

The surveys demonstrate that small numbers of adult coho continue to return to Japanese Gulch for the fifth year in a row after the completion of a significant stream restoration project removing four major barriers to salmon migration (Murphy, et al. 2013; Murphy & Coale 2014; Murphy, et al. 2016a). For the second out of four years, coho have returned again to Big Gulch. In contrast to small and modest runs in the past three years, though, surveyors documented zero chum returning to Big Gulch in 2016. Two out of three necropsies of female coho in Japanese Gulch revealed evidence of pre-spawn mortality. One necropsy of a female coho in Big Gulch provided evidence of spawning. Data over three years indicate coho pre-spawn mortality rates of 40% for Japanese and 50% for Big Gulch. Wildlife monitoring confirmed sightings of cooper’s hawk in Japanese Gulch, previously reported by Mukilteo Wildlife Society.

Water quality data took on increased significance this year. A newly implemented macroinvertebrate survey documented caddisfly, mayfly, stonefly, scud, aquatic worm, and midge in both creeks, leech in Japanese Gulch, and blackfly in Big Gulch and resulted in a “fair” rating of the health of both streams. Chemical and bacteriological sampling found the streams to be in a habitable range for salmon with a couple of key exceptions. Surveyors observed a spike in E. coli in Big Gulch in May and June that returned to normal levels after City of Mukilteo officials identified and corrected a potential source of fecal coliform. Students documented high pH, low alkalinity, and high turbidity that coincided with the storm event that should have brought chum back to Big Gulch this year. Surveyors documented a significant flow of polystyrene beads in Japanese Gulch, a form of plastic pollution observed but not reported in the previous year. Distribution and density patterns suggest that a ruptured and submerged float in the detention pond may be the source. Corrective efforts are needed to stem the flow and clean up the beads.

This year, 141 students, staff and faculty volunteered for salmon monitoring, wildlife and/or water quality monitoring. Ten of these volunteers were returning volunteers from previous years, while 131 were new to the project. Overall, 353 students, staff and community members have contributed to this community-based service-learning project over the past five years. Participation has grown as faculty and students at Edmonds CC recognize the value of assisting local municipalities in their endeavors to restore and conserve fish and wildlife habitat. This project serves as an example of the value of community-based citizen science and service-learning in filling the monitoring and assessment gap in current salmon and steelhead restoration throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Aeromonas species are ubiquitous bacteria in terrestrial and aquatic milieus. In salmonids, they are renowned as enteric pathogens causing haemorrhagic septicaemia, fin rot, soft tissue rot and furunculosis resulting in major die-offs and fish kills. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in controlling disease problems through alternative methods since the use of chemotherapeutic agents may lead to occurrence of resistant bacteria. Lactic acid bacteria may provide protection to create a hostile environment for pathogens. This review summarizes the current understanding of Aeromonas infection in salmonids and the use of probiotics in aquaculture for the purpose to prevent these pathogenic bacteria, including the definition and mechanism of probiotics action, and describes their application, prospects and difficulties associated with their use in aquaculture.

Despite the enormous potential of anadromous fish, foragers do not mass extract and store salmonids until very late in the archaeological record of California. Acorns, by contrast, were intensively used quite early in the record.  Salmon are traditionally viewed as a low cost, high ranking resource, and acorns as a high cost, low ranking resource. The question thus arises: why were salmon not used and stored en masse much earlier? We offer a solution using a simple foraging model that distinguishes resources on their storage as well as overall cost, making it possible to calculate the risk of resource caching, which appears to have delayed intensive salmon procurement in California.

Fish play a key role in the trophic dynamics of lakes. With climate warming, complex changes in fish assemblage structure may be expected owing to direct effects on temperature and indirect effects operating through eutrophication, water level changes, stratification and salinisation. We reviewed published and new long-term fish data series from 24 European lakes. We found profound changes in fish assemblage composition, size and age structure during recent decades and a shift towards higher dominance of eurythermal species. The shift has occurred despite an overall reduction in nutrient loading that should have benefited the fish species typically inhabiting coldwater low-nutrient lakes and larger-sized individuals. The cold-stenothermic Arctic charr has been particularly affected and its abundance has decreased in the majority of the lakes where its presence was recorded. The harvest of cool-stenothermal trout has decreased substantially in two southern lakes. Vendace, whitefish and smelt show a different response depending on lake depth and latitude. Perch was apparently
stimulated in the north, with stronger year classes in warm years, but its abundance has declined in the southern Lake Maggiore. Where introduced, roach now seems to take advantage of the higher temperature after years of low populations. Eurythermal species such as common bream, pike-perch and shad are on the increase. The response of fish to the warming in recent decades has been surprisingly strong,
making them ideal sentinels for detecting and documenting climate-induced modifications of freshwater ecosystems.

AbstractThe fish remains sampled from archaeological sites are generally the result of human food refuse; therefore, the study of retrieved fish scales may provide reliable information on the season of capture and on paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental changes. Among Western European freshwater fishes, the grayling, Thymallus thymallus¸ has the most easily recognizable scales and is a commonly recovered species from Palaeolithic contexts. This study, therefore, is based on the growth pattern analysis of modern and archaeological scales from grayling specimens. The modern specimens were collected monthly in France (n = 22), Switzerland (n = 16), Finland (n = 20) and Sweden (n = 10). Scale growth patterns were measured using numerical analysis to a high accuracy. The results showed that the archaeological population of grayling is closer to the present Finnish population. Furthermore, the comparison of seasonal growth patterns between current and archaeological European populations demonstrated that graylings were normally captured during the spring at Le Taillis des Coteaux Magdalenian site. This type of approach can be used to understand environmental conditions at a low spatial scale and also to help identify fishing seasons during archaeological periods. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Exposure of female Atlantic salmon to elevated temperature can result in a dramatic reduction in egg fertility and embryo survival. Reductions in plasma 17β-estradiol (E2) levels are associated with much of the observed reduction in reproductive performance; however, the molecular basis for reduced E2 levels remains unknown. This study examined gene expression of ovarian steroidogenic enzymes and plasma levels of gonadotropins in maiden and repeat spawning Atlantic salmon exposed to higher than normal temperatures. Circulating levels of follicle stimulating hormone (Fsh) were significantly elevated in both maiden and repeat spawning fish maintained at 22 °C compared to 14 °C during vitellogenesis, but plasma luteinising hormone levels were mostly unaffected. In contrast, gene expression of the ovarian p450 aromatase a and cholesterol side chain cleavage protein were depressed at 22 °C compared to 14 °C. Hepatic gene expression of estrogen receptor alpha did not change with thermal challenge. The results show that the ovarian response to Fsh is inhibited at 22 °C, at least partly as a result of reduced expression of genes coding for steroidogenic enzymes.

The ability to distinguish between different migratory behaviours (e.g., anadromy and potamodromy) in fish can provide important insights into the ecology, evolution, and conservation of many aquatic species. We present a simple stable carbon isotope (δ 13 C) approach for distinguishing between sockeye (anadromous ocean migrants) and kokanee (potamodromous freshwater residents), two migratory ecotypes of Oncor-hynchus nerka (Salmonidae) that is applicable throughout most of their range across coastal regions of the North Pacific Ocean. Analyses of kokanee (n = 239) and sockeye (n = 417) from 87 sites spanning the North Pacific (Russia to California) show that anad-romous and potamodromous ecotypes are broadly distinguishable on the basis of the δ 13 C values of their scale and bone collagen. We present three case studies demonstrating how this approach can address questions in archaeology, archival, and conservation research. Relative to conventional methods for determining migratory status, which typically apply chemical analyses to otoliths or involve genetic analyses of tissues, the δ 13 C approach outlined here has the benefit of being non-lethal (when applied to scales), cost-effective, widely available commercially, and should be much more broadly accessible for addressing archaeological questions since the recovery of otoliths at archaeological sites is rare.