Spring Chinook in particular, love this big, emerald blue pool just yards from the sea. Many linger here in summer and early fall: a reason why it’s long been an important fishing area for members of the Hoh Tribe. 

And yet, in both 2020 and 2022, the Hoh Tribe largely closed its spring Chinook fishery, concerned by forecasts predicting poor returns of salmon to this 56-mile system. The Tribe’s closures aimed to help the run rebound. And in 2024, Tribal experts noted that escapement numbers—adult fish that pass upriver before harvest begins—were the highest since 2002. 

Photo Credit: Luke Kelly, Trout Unlimited

Just inside the sheltered elbow of the Hoh River estuary, hundreds of spring Chinook salmon have been obsered. The mystery is where do they go next—further upriver to spawn, or back out to sea, aiming for other rivers?

The Tribe has long focused on making sure escapement goals are met upriver. But what of the large numbers of spring Chinook pooling in the estuary?

“Even in years when we expected low numbers of Chinook and the fishery was closed, we still observed many Chinook hanging out in the lower river,” says James Losee, Wild Salmon Center’s Senior Wild Fish Manager for Washington State. “It didn’t always make sense with what we were seeing upriver.”

“Even in years when we expected low numbers of Chinook, we still observed many hanging out in the lower river. It didn’t always make sense.”

Wild Salmon Center Washington Senior Wild Fish Manager James Losee

For Tribal fishery managers and research partners like Losee, that potential disconnect raised a question: what if these fish in the estuary aren’t actually Hoh River salmon? 

“Salmon migrating along ocean coastlines have been known to take breaks on their way home,” Losee says. “They’re called “dip-ins.” 

Every year, large numbers of spring Chinook salmon hang out in the Hoh River estuary. A new fish tracking project aims to find out if these are temporary visitors from other rivers, or fish that eventually will head further upriver to spawn.

With its cold, glacial waters, Losee says, the Hoh estuary would be a fantastic place to slow down for a bit on the long journey back to other home rivers.  

“If these fish lingering in the estuary are tourists, just stopping by to visit, the next thing we’d want to know is if they’re from large healthy populations,” Losee says. “If that’s the case, that might reopen some fishing options for Tribal fishers while we work to figure out what’s really going on with the Hoh’s native wild fish.”

To solve these interlocking mysteries, the Hoh Tribe invited Wild Salmon Center and other partners to join forces to genetically identify these fish and acoustically track them, potentially across oceans.

“Our first duty is to protect the fish in our home rivers,” says Bernard Afterbuffalo, a Hoh Tribal member and the Tribe’s Natural Resources Technician. “But fishing is also our way of life. That’s why we’re very interested to see what we can learn from our fish tracking project.”

“Fishing is our way of life. That’s why we’re very interested to see what we can learn from our fish tracking project.”

Hoh Tribe Natural Resources Technician Bernard Afterbuffalo

Over summer 2025, Hoh Tribe natural resource experts and other partners accompanied Wild Salmon’s Center’s James Losee on many field trips throughout the Hoh River Basin to tag wild fish and install telemetry devices along riverbanks.

The project began in earnest in spring and summer 2025, as Losee and Tribal fishery staff spent days in the Hoh River estuary simulating the traditional Tribal fishery to catch adult spring Chinook.

Moving quickly between live wells of river water, the team safely sedated each fish and performed a three-minute surgery to attach what Losee calls a “backpack”—an acoustically-tagged saddle to broadcast the fish’s location. Then, the team carefully released each fish back into the water.

The team also spent time bushwhacking throughout the watershed. Near the edges of the Hoh mainstem and several tributaries, they installed more than a dozen telemetry devices—each resembling a two-liter bottle of soda pop—to listen for fish with acoustic tags and report back.

Now, the tracking project enters data collection. For the next two years, the Hoh’s listening devices will record any passing spring Chinook wearing a backpack (along with additional fish species tagged from this and other projects).

Combined with genetic analysis, this information can help solve the mystery of whether any of the estuary springers are native to the Hoh. 

To track the movements of the rest—potential dip-ins from other rivers—the team is tapping into a growing network of similar telemetry devices up and down the Pacific Coast.

Photo Credit: Wild Salmon Center

Hoh Tribal member Phil Riebe holds up an acoustic tracking device, referred to as a “backpack.” Surgically attached to dozens of spring Chinook in the Hoh River, these devices can help us track where they go next—whether farther upriver to spawn, or back out to sea, heading for other rivers.

“This is an exciting time to be a salmon tracker,” Losee says. “Pretty much anywhere from Alaska to California, we can see almost in real-time where these salmon go. We can basically follow them to their home rivers.”

“This is an exciting time to be a salmon tracker. Anywhere from Alaska to California, we can see almost in real-time where these salmon go.”

Wild Salmon Center Washington Senior Wild Fish Manager James Losee

Photo Credit: © Atlas of Pacific Salmon (X. Augerot) 2005

The full range of Chinook salmon across the Pacific Rim. While most adult Chinook find their way back to the river of their birth after their ocean life stage, a percentage of every population strays. With our partners, we aim to find out whether the Hoh’s mysterious estuary springers are native fish, strays, or temporary dip-ins from other rivers.

If Chinook salmon caught in the Hoh ultimately travel on to other home rivers, it could mean that some could be harvested without impacting Hoh spring Chinook. This ambitious project could also shed light on questions that go well beyond the Hoh—such as how best to balance fishing and conservation efforts up and down the West Coast.

“When we decide whether to fish or not, these are decisions we can make here as a Tribe, within our community,” Afterbuffalo says. “But if we do our part in the Hoh to recover salmon and yet fish keep suffering, then the solutions need to be bigger as well.”

Data collection like this is a big step in the right direction, Losee says. The more we know about how Hoh salmon move in ocean and freshwater, the more options the Hoh Tribe has to steward its fishery and advance international salmon science.

Across the Pacific, fish tracking projects like this are on the rise—starting with work by Wild Salmon Center and our partners to bring this novel science to other river systems across the Pacific Rim.

Photo Credit: Wild Salmon Center

Wild Salmon Center’s James Losee with a telemetry device ready to be installed on the Hoh River mainstem.

“What we learn in the Hoh could support Tribal fishers to get back on the water sooner,” Losee says. “But this project is also a perfect example of the nexus between salmon science, fish management, and treaty rights. Big picture science like this really does show what could be possible in other salmon rivers.”

“Big picture science like this really does show what could be possible in other salmon rivers.”

Wild Salmon Center Washington Senior Wild Fish Manager James Losee

Photo Credit: Wild Salmon Center

Project partners out in the field. Pictured: Hoh Tribe natural resource experts, Wild Salmon Center staff, and other partners including colleagues at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

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One sunny August afternoon in 2024, two fish ecologists dipped hands in a small creek framed in tall beach grass. In an eddy, finger-length wild fish darted through the clear water—coho salmon, the ecologists marveled, or possibly steelhead or cutthroat trout. 

At this early stage of life, it can be hard to distinguish these wild fish species without closer inspection. But despite their tiny size, it was clear that these adventurous young fish weren’t afraid to taste salt. They tested the water just yards from where tiny Wa’atch Creek meets the Pacific Ocean, following its short, steep descent through Olympic Peninsula rainforest. 

From Seattle, the nearest major city, it takes more than four hours by car to get to this craggy beach. This is Makah Territory, and Makah Tribal Habitat Division Manager Stephanie Peterson Martin is responsible for stewarding the health of fish and wildlife across all 54 square miles of this sovereign nation at the northwesternmost corner of the contiguous United States. Now, thanks in part to Peterson Martin’s guest that afternoon—Wild Salmon Center Fish Habitat Specialist Nicole Rasmussen—she and her team will bring that focus on fish directly to Wa’atch Creek.

“When Nicole approached me about projects, it’s like, man, I got this whole list!” Peterson Martin recalls. “I said, I could keep you guys busy for a long time. But let’s start with one.”

“When Nicole approached me about projects, I said, I could keep you guys busy for a long time. But let’s start with one.”

Makah Tribal Habitat Division Manager Stephanie Peterson Martin

Wa’atch Creek runs more than seven miles from headwaters to ocean. But for the young fish darting in the summer eddy, it’s much, much shorter. Just a quarter-mile upstream, these fish meet a formidable relic from World War II: a squared-off tunnel that looks more like a hallway for humans than a route for small fish.

World War II was a particularly fraught period of history for the Makah. In the early 1940s, during wartime heights, the U.S. Army abruptly commandeered strategic locations across Makah Territory—building roads, radar stations, office compounds, and myriad other heavy infrastructure. 

The presence of U.S. armed forces didn’t end with the war; it wasn’t until 1988 that the U.S. Air Force finally withdrew its last stationed personnel. To this day, Makah Tribal experts are still working to clean up military debris—from asbestos siding to a warren of old, cracking water pipes, soil contaminated by leaky underground fuel storage tanks, garbage dumps, and even shipwrecks.

The military aftermath includes the Wa’atch Creek box culvert: a massive concrete tunnel installed by the Army when it paved Cape Flattery Road around the peninsula’s most remote corner. The culvert—squared on all sides and 30 feet long—turns into a firehose in the winter: shunting water through too fast for fish to navigate. In summer, the culvert’s flat floor spreads the flow fingernail-thin across the concrete: much too low and slow for fish. 

To this day, Makah Tribal experts are still working to clean up military debris—from asbestos siding to a warren of old, cracking water pipes, soil contaminated by leaky underground fuel storage tanks, garbage dumps, and even shipwrecks.

For the Makah, the problems here don’t end with fish passage. A beach ball-sized dip in the road above offers clear evidence that the box culvert is also starting to fail structurally, taking the road with it. It’s a “ticking time bomb,” says Peterson Martin, with serious consequences for her community. Cape Flattery Road is the first Tribally-owned scenic byway in the United States, and essential to the Makah’s growing tourism economy. It’s also a key evacuation route for Tribal members in the event of a tsunami.

All of this makes fixing Wa’atch Creek’s box culvert a top priority. But for years, this work has felt logistically out of reach. Work on Cape Flattery Road is subject to a morass of conflicting federal and state road standards. There are funding issues, and permitting and labor constraints. But Peterson Martin knew of Wild Salmon Center’s success in partnering with Washington Coast Tribes to find federal salmon recovery dollars for critical infrastructure projects. Why not try out a partnership, she thought—test the saltwater a bit, like those baby fish?

“I knew that Wild Salmon Center has approval to work here,” Peterson Martin says. “So the question is, can we get it done?”

From summer 2024 and into fall, plans evolved from conceptual to concrete. The two teams worked out a timeline that spanned initial design to boots-on-ground construction. Rasmussen tapped her Wild Salmon Center colleagues to help secure grant funding for initial project designs from the Resources Legacy Fund Open Rivers Fund and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

“I knew that Wild Salmon Center has approval to work here. So the question is, can we get it done?”

Makah Tribal Habitat Division Manager Stephanie Peterson Martin

In December 2024, Rasmussen and Peterson Martin bushwhacked down to the banks of Wa’atch Creek with Tribal staff and KPFF engineers. The field visit formally kicked off plans for replacing the concrete box culvert with an arched and far wider steel bridge span. By this summer, Tribal and Wild Salmon Center staff will review designs with engineers: designs that they can take back to agencies like NOAA to fund boots-on-ground construction.

Once full funding is secured, it will take three years, at least, to complete the Wa’atch Creek Project. Tourists taking camper vans to the Cape Flattery Trail and lighthouse overlook will need to endure construction delays and detours, as crews repave a dip-free road on top of the new bridge. Peterson Martin and Rasmussen will also need to exercise patience, to see if Chinook salmon, coho, steelhead, and cutthroat trout eventually find their way under the new bridge to the upstream habitat the project will reopen.

Both ecologists know that for wild fish, every new mile counts. Research shows that small creeks like Wa’atch can play an outsized role in the long-term resilience of salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Each new stretch of cold, clean water gives wild fish more room to adapt and thrive in a time of rapid climate change. 

“If this project is successful, I think it opens up the door for conversations about other projects that we also need,” Peterson Martin says. “So we are super excited about this partnership.”

Already, she and Rasmussen are scoping out other fish passage projects across Makah Territory. Many of them are barriers created by World War II’s military buildout and the long federal presence that followed. Project by project, the Makah are reclaiming their land from this unwelcomed legacy. Project by project, they’ll also be welcoming more salmon home.

“If this project is successful, I think it opens up the door for conversations about other projects that we also need. So we are super excited about this partnership.”

Makah Tribal Habitat Division Manager Stephanie Peterson Martin

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James Losee knows what it feels like to work as a fisheries manager: walls of meetings, high stakes decision-making, the gnawing sense that there are great new tools out there that could really help—and not enough time in the day to go and find them.

“I’ve been in a lot of situations where someone has shared a big idea with me, or results from really exciting fisheries research,” Losee says. “And I’ve thought, I wish I had an extra hour to see if it applies to a problem I’m trying to solve.”

In Fall 2024, he joined Wild Salmon Center as our Senior Wild Fish Manager for Washington State. For Losee, the new role follows a 25-year career devoted to hands-on fisheries management—both at federal agencies like NOAA, where he focused on high seas salmon research, and at the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, where he shaped statewide policy on where, when, and how people fish. In 2020, for example, Losee led a WDFW decision to suspend the practice of fishing from a boat for the season. The move—an urgent attempt to reduce wild steelhead mortality but keep state and Tribal fishers on the water—represents the hard but necessary decisions that fisheries managers face at a time of widespread decline for Pacific salmonids.

Losee’s new role with Wild Salmon Center is no less ambitious. To reverse the alarming trajectory of Olympic Peninsula steelhead and salmon through science and policy, Losee’s prepared to step in where his former government colleagues might not have time or resources. The stakes are high, with both Olympic Peninsula steelhead and Chinook now petitioned for listing under the Endangered Species Act. 

“While I was at WDFW, I saw how effective Wild Salmon Center is at improving habitat and water quality for wild fish,” Losee says. “But we can also do more to apply better tools to harvest and angling encounters.” 

Losee is ready to explore new strategies with the Tribal, state, and federal fisheries managers. He’s one of the world’s leading anadromous trout experts and an author of more than 40 peer-reviewed papers—expertise that helped to inform WDFW’s embrace of more proactive protections for Washington salmonids including steelhead. 

While I was at WDFW, I saw how effective Wild Salmon Center is at improving habitat and water quality for wild fish. But we can also do more to apply better tools to harvest and angling encounters.” 

Wild Salmon Center Senior Wild Fish Manger James Losee

“James achieved huge conservation wins for salmon and steelhead in his past roles with WDFW and NOAA,” says WSC Watershed Restoration Direction Jess Helsley. “We’re thrilled to leverage his expertise in Washington and beyond, as part of WSC’s growing policy team.”     

Below, Losee shares his new team’s big vision, why fisheries management is for everyone, and what keeps him up at night.

Wild Salmon Center: You’ve spent decades in fisheries management, and you’ve just reupped with this new role at Wild Salmon Center, albeit now from the outside. So what’s your salmon origin story? 

James Losee: For me, as a kid, it was all about being outside with bugs, snakes, and fish. My family moved to Yakima, Washington, when I was two weeks old, so the rivers and lakes near Yakima are where I ran around as a kid—fishing rod in hand.

I’ve always had a deep connection to the outdoors and the water. If there’s water nearby I want to be in it. These days I spend multiple days a week on the water, surfing, fishing, free diving, spearfishing or just walking a stretch of stream. At some point when I was growing up, I started thinking about what kind of work would be meaningful, and close to water. Fish biology has always felt natural. And it appealed to my curiosity, because this is an area with a lot of conservation questions—and an urgency to find answers. Even today, 25 years into my career, I’m learning something new everyday.

WSC: What do you hope to do in your new role with Wild Salmon Center that you maybe couldn’t in your time working with state and federal agencies?

One exciting thing is that in this new role, there’s an expectation that I’ll be staying informed on the latest scientific literature and connecting with fisheries managers in other states and parts of the world.

At WDFW, I was responsible for managing the largest geographic region in Washington State, and leading a big, talented team of fisheries professionals, scientists, and technicians. That meant time and resources were very tight. For many of my former colleagues there, this challenge remains. Despite being on a team with absolute experts in their fields, it was really tough to bring science and policy together to create outcomes that benefited fishers while still prioritizing wild fish. 

Now, with WSC, I hope to explore new ideas and bring those to the table in a way that is efficient for fisheries managers and benefits wild fish in real time. 

In this new role, I’ll be staying informed on the latest scientific literature and connecting with fisheries managers in other states and parts of the world.”

Wild Salmon Center Senior Wild Fish Manger James Losee

WSC: You want to be an asset for fisheries managers. What do you hope WSC and our partners in government can achieve by working together more closely?

Well, ultimately, we’d like to see fisheries managers focus on a long-term vision for our shared fisheries resources.

Right now, fisheries managers often have to make rapid decisions to address short-term problems. So they rely on the tools available in that moment. But we know that salmon face a really uncertain future. The tools we used in the past may not be working today. Meanwhile, new ideas are being developed and tested outside of the fisheries management space—and those tools are getting better every day. 

So our hope is that we can help managers find the space to take a breath and do some long-term planning. That’s our biggest goal, and it’s ambitious, but definitely achievable if we all work together and challenge ourselves to think big. 

On a smaller scale, we’re also looking at a number of watersheds that are performing really well. With the leadership of Tribal governments, wild fish on the Quillayute and Hoh Rivers are likely to be stable for years to come. So we’re looking to support state and Tribal agencies to keep protecting these places, and keep these populations healthy and resilient. 

WSC: We’ve noted a paradigm shift underway at WDFW, from a focus on “abundance—trying to maximize steelhead numbers—to the broader health and resiliency of these populations.  What led to this shift?

The salmon management world has generally been all about the people who want to catch and eat salmon. There are important reasons for that, especially considering the cultural significance of salmon harvest to Tribal governments. But at the state level, fisheries managers get their mandate from a broader group of taxpayers, so it can’t only be about the sport fishers who want to catch and kill. 

Most people in Washington State don’t fish. Many will never catch or touch or see a salmon. And yet they still care. We know this—its been surveyed. People who live here want to feel confident that their natural resources are healthy and being cared for. When they cross a salmon-bearing stream, they want to look down and know that the life in it is persisting.

Most people in Washington State don’t fish. Many will never catch or touch or see a salmon. And yet they still care. When they cross a salmon-bearing stream, they want to look down and know that the life in it is persisting.”

Wild Salmon Center Senior Wild Fish Manger James Losee

We choose this place to live and it brings a sense of self and wholeness to know that our home is healthy—that the ecosystem is protected. On the other hand, when we talk to Tribal leaders, it doesn’t take long to see that consuming salmon is really important to them in a way that’s even bigger—perhaps even in a way a non-Native person can’t understand. It’s about feeding the mind, body, and soul. 

WDFW’s mandate is first to preserve and protect natural resources, and then support opportunities for sport and commercial fishers. It’s that first part that serves all of us in the Pacific Northwest. Most of whom, as we’ve said, do not go fishing. WDFW has made progress on shifting that mindset. This shift will benefit all of us, but there is still a long way to go. 

WSC: People say conservation work is a marathon, not a sprint. What keeps you motivated?

I’d say it has to be the underloved fish in salmon conservation, specifically steelhead and cutthroat trout. I’m the cofounder of an organization called the Coastal Cutthroat Trout Coalition, and my current and past fisheries research is based in large part on filling data gaps on seagoing trout species including coastal cutthroat, arctic char, brown trout, and brook trout. 

My research has taken me all over the world, from Mongolia to Newfoundland, Iceland, and Sweden. It’s work that has allowed me to think outside the box and apply tips and tricks learned from other people and places to the work we do here in Washington. I’m thinking of examples like the benefits of selective fishing, or catch-and-release regulations over full fishery closures.

This is what I lay in bed at night thinking about. How do we take the best tools available and apply them to the fish management challenges of today?  Over the course of my career, I’ve come to see it as my responsibility to help where I can to reverse the trajectory of wild salmon decline.

I’m proud of the work I’ve done so far, and the small difference I’ve made for wild fish and the people in Washington who depend on them. I can’t wait to continue this work at Wild Salmon Center—in partnership with my Tribal, state, and federal colleagues both here and around the globe.

I’m proud of the work I’ve done so far, and the small difference I’ve made for wild fish and the people in Washington who depend on them. I can’t wait to continue this work at Wild Salmon Center.”

Wild Salmon Center Senior Wild Fish Manger James Losee

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Wow. This was a year of epic victories and new challenges for all of us here at Wild Salmon Center. With our partners in Alaska and beyond, we stopped Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay; meanwhile, geopolitics forced us (for now) to suspend our Russia partnerships. All told, this year showed us that even in times of strife, wild salmon and steelhead can still bring us together across the North Pacific. From our high tech work with First Nations to a $174 million win for Oregon rivers, read on for why 2023 just might be our best year yet!

1) Victory for Bristol Bay, Alaska

In mid-February, WSC hosted a party with our Bristol Bay Defense Fund coalition partners here in our Portland office. With EPA’s final decision on Pebble Mine then just a few weeks out, let’s just say that the occasion called for celebration. The fact that Bristol Bay is now safe from the threat of this toxic mine owes so much to our amazing partners, from our valiant and unstoppable coalition leader Alannah Hurley of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay to our friends at the Natural Resources Defense Council, SalmonState, Arc Initiatives, the Alaska Venture Fund, Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay, the Native American Rights Fund, Business of Bristol Bay, Cassidy & Associates, and True Blue Strategies. LONG LIVE BRISTOL BAY!

2) Salmon Vision Steals the Show in B.C.

In October, WSC Senior Watershed Scientist Dr. Will Atlas along with First Nations partners and others officially debuted “Salmon Vision,” a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence tool piloted on First Nations fish weirs on the British Columbia Central Coast. International media picked up the story of how this Indigenous-led automated fish counting and identification technology—with promising early results published in Frontiers in Marine Science—could be a game-changer for salmon managers across the Pacific Rim.

3) The Klamath Dams are Coming Down

As of November, work to tear down Copco No. 2—the first of four Klamath River dams scheduled for removal near the Oregon/California border—was officially complete, bringing this historic salmon system one step closer to flowing freely for the first time in a century. By November 2024, all four dams are scheduled to be fully out: the largest dam removal ever. But our work is just getting started. In 2024 and beyond, WSC scientists will be lending a hand to partners including the Karuk Tribe on an ambitious plan to recover Chinook salmon in the Klamath Basin. 

4) $174 Million For Oregon’s Water Future

In August, the Oregon State Legislature allocated a whopping $174 million for drought resiliency and water security funding, including tens of millions of dollars for programs and projects that improve stream flow and reconnect rivers. This unprecedented investment in Oregon’s water future is due in no small part to the sustained advocacy of the Oregon Water Partnership: a WSC-convened coalition of seven statewide conservation groups. “There’s a lot we can’t control out there,” says Caylin Barter, WSC’s Oregon Water Policy Senior Program Manager, “but there are obvious and achievable ways we can do a better job of protecting our home waters.” (Watch Barter explain how in our short video “Finding Flow.”)

5) 12,000+ Action Takers

From thanking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for saving Bristol Bay to closing loopholes for Oregon water rights violators, you really spoke up for wild salmon in 2023! Year after year, we count on the WSC community to take action for wild fish, our home watersheds, and the wide-ranging benefits they provide. Salmon are a keystone species, but you, our community activists, are key to why we’ll make sure these species thrive.

6) $22 Million for Pacific Northwest Restoration

Our program staff and grants team worked overtime this year to fund an astonishing number of shovel-ready restoration projects across the Pacific Northwest. This year we secured more than $8 million in Oregon grant commitments from NOAA and the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, and nearly $14 million for Washington projects from NOAA, NFWF, and Washington State’s Recreation and Conservation Office. These funds will support coastal jobs, repair ecosystems, and help revitalize fisheries that have sustained people here for millennia.

7) Tribal Partnerships on the Olympic Peninsula

Tribal partnerships are key to protecting and restoring salmon stronghold habitats. With historic levels of federal infrastructure funding flowing into salmon restoration, we’re thrilled to be working alongside a growing number of Tribal partners on the Olympic Peninsula, including the Quileute, Hoh, and Makah Tribes, and the Quinault Indian Nation. Together, we’re rapidly scaling our work to correct culverts, decommission failing roads, and expand climate-resilient habitat for steelhead, Chinook, coho, and other wild salmonids—like threatened Lake Ozette sockeye.

8) A 28-Million-Acre Chance to Save Alaska Public Lands

WSC and our partners have launched a campaign to seize a once-in-a-lifetime shot to protect 28 million acres of Alaska public lands: some of the largest intact landscapes left on Earth. These salmon-rich federal lands are located across the state: in the Bristol Bay, Bering Sea Western Interior, East Alaska, Kobuk Seward, and the Ring of Fire regions. And they’re under threat: pending public land orders from the last days of the Trump Administration would open these lands to extractive industrial development. In 2022, the Biden Administration decided to take a closer look at these orders. Now our chance to speak up is here, as the Bureau of Land Management opens a review and public comment period.

9) The International Taimen Initiative Kicks Off

In May, many of the world’s top taimen experts gathered in Hokkaido for the first in-person meeting of the WSC-convened International Taimen Initiative. Taimen are the planet’s largest salmonids, but comparatively little is known about this ancient group of species. Our kick-off meeting in Hokkaido brought together members of the IUCN Salmonid Specialist Group and partners in Japan, the Russian Far East, and Mongolia. Through the scientific collaboration that the ITI aims to foster, we hope to develop new strategies to protect these fascinating and increasingly imperiled species. (Travel to some of the world’s most remote taimen strongholds with WSC CEO & President Guido Rahr in our film “River Tigers.”)

10) Stand Tall Oregon Steps Up

By September, our three-month-old Stand Tall Oregon campaign already had more than 6,400 sign-ons from Oregonians ready to support a 70-year habitat conservation plan for more than 500,000 acres of Western Oregon state forests. That’s a groundswell of new support for clean water and healthy fish and wildlife habitat on these cherished public lands. Strength in numbers is how we’ll counter relentless pressure by the timber industry and its allies to weaken and delay this legacy plan for Oregon state forests, now less than a year away from likely federal approval.

11) Amazing New Team Members

This year, the WSC welcome wagon was open 24/7, as we onboarded eight incredibly talented professionals to our team. We’re thrilled to have the smarts and skills of Science Intern Luke Brockman, Grants Coordinator Sheila Hanson, Human Resources Assistant Annie Kleffner, Government Grants Manager Jordan McCauley, Photo Library Intern Griffin Morse, Olympic Peninsula Fish Habitat Specialist Nicole Rasmussen (meet Nicole here), Alaska Campaign & Outreach Manager Morgan Urquia, and Staff Accountant Mariah Williams. Our 2023 gratitudes list wouldn’t be complete without you.

12) More Live Time With You!

With growth comes opportunity, and in 2023, we seized every chance to interface and celebrate with you, the greater Wild Salmon Center community. This year, we hosted more events than ever. You might have celebrated with us at SalmonFest 2023 in Ninilchik, Alaska, packed the crowd at our sold-out screening of The Lost Salmon in Seattle, or rallied for state forests on Oregon’s North Coast. And we’re just getting started! 2024 will bring even more opportunities for all of us to gather, learn, laugh, and grow our powerful base for wild salmon action.

Thanks for being on our team this year. If you haven’t yet had a chance to contribute to Wild Salmon Center, it’s never too late.

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Want to see the world’s largest steelhead? Try the Skeena River, on the rugged North Coast of British Columbia.

“We’re talking about some of the most powerful wild fish on the planet,” says Greg Knox. As executive director of the nonprofit SkeenaWild—a core Wild Salmon Center partner—he would know. Practically every month of the year, Knox sees steelhead return to this vast, rugged watershed: salmonids that can still surpass 40 pounds, luring anglers from across the planet. 

“Skeena steelhead bring a lot of people here to our upriver communities,” says Knox. “But me, I don’t fish for steelhead much anymore.”

It’s not that he lost interest. Of all species in their genus, Knox finds Oncorhynchus mykiss the most fascinating: adventurous, unpredictable, and highly individualistic.

“Most salmonids return to freshwater on a mission to spawn,” Knox explains. “But steelhead are explorers. They’re magical, intelligent, resilient creatures that live beneath the surface, that you sometimes chase around with a fly.”

“Steelhead are explorers. They’re magical, intelligent, resilient creatures that you sometimes chase around with a fly.”

Greg Knox, SkeenaWild Executive Director

Once, steelhead magic felt everywhere; present in watersheds from Kamchatka to Southern California, even marking the start of fishing season for Indigenous communities like the Quileute Tribe. Over millions of years across the North Pacific, steelhead evolved a breathtaking array of adaptive behaviors, from how long a juvenile may linger in-river to how many times it might return home from the ocean to spawn. (Steelhead, unlike other salmonids, aren’t necessarily one-and-done spawners.) Some—rainbow trout—make the choice to never leave freshwater in the first place.

But resilience has limits. Over the last four decades, conservationists like Knox have borne witness to stunning declines in steelhead runs: downward trends that seem to be escalating and extend well beyond Canada. Few agree on the reasons why, driving a debate made even more difficult by a lack of both data and scientific research on the species. 

“The mysteries of steelhead add challenges for their conservation,” Knox says. “We know they’re in trouble. But they’re also not as well-studied as commercial fish like sockeye or Chinook. We really haven’t yet figured them out.”

As conservation scientists race to better understand steelhead—and hopefully find solutions—Knox says the least we can do is minimize harm in the meantime. On a personal level, that means keeping his flies in the box.

But he knows that the absence of one angler on an upper Skeena tributary won’t fix the problem. Not when steelhead must survive a lethal obstacle course just to get here.

“The mysteries of steelhead add challenges for their conservation. We know they’re in trouble. But we haven’t yet figured them out.”

Greg Knox, SkeenaWild Executive Director

Here’s what we do know about the great home migration of Skeena steelhead: they first show up on our radar heading east along the Aleutian Islands. These runs travel right through the commercial salmon seine and gillnet fleet off the coast of Southeast Alaska. Then they hit commercial gillnet fisheries at the mouth of the Skeena, followed by First Nations food fisheries on the mainstem. Finally, Skeena steelhead face the sport fisheries that beckon anglers to upriver towns like Terrace and Smithers.

“Skeena steelhead have to survive this gauntlet of dangers to get back home,” Knox says. “We think one of every two gets caught and dies on its home migration, mostly when they’re still out on the open ocean.”

Steelhead, he says, are reeling under this system of “mixed-stock” marine fishing. We don’t know how many steelhead are caught and discarded as bycatch; these numbers are underreported—or not reported at all—in Alaskan and Canadian commercial fisheries. But we do know that very few discarded fish survive to spawn: whether steelhead, sockeye, or chum.

According to Knox and others, collateral damage from mixed-stock marine fishing is a real contributor to the rapid decline of B.C fisheries. In the 1970s and 80s, the province’s total annual salmon catch averaged 24 million fish. Over the last decade, that average has dropped to four million fish or less. 

“Skeena steelhead have to survive this gauntlet of dangers to get back home. We think one of every two gets caught and dies on its home migration.”

Greg Knox, SkeenaWild Executive Director

As more scientists dig into steelhead declines, Knox thinks mixed-stock fishing will be spotlighted as a key culprit. Surprisingly, this gives him hope. Because unlike global warming, we can change the way we fish right now—and see results. Knox reminds us that human communities shift gears all the time; we’re adaptable, much like another magical, resilient creature.

“I think we know the future won’t be like the past,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean that we can’t still have healthy steelhead populations, and even harvest them. We just need a different approach. And we’re already headed in the right direction.”

“The future won’t be like the past But that doesn’t mean that we can’t still have healthy steelhead populations, and even harvest them. We just need a different approach.”

Greg Knox, SkeenaWild Executive Director

Since the 1940s, Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans has operated a fish counting fence on the Babine River, a main Skeena tributary flowing from the rich salmon spawning habitat of Babine Lake.

The fence wasn’t DFO’s idea. For at least 1,300 years, the ancestors of the Lake Babine Nation operated a vast fish weir exactly here. The fish weir, or fish fence, was constructed of painstakingly engineered wooden panels that enabled families to harvest sockeye on route to Babine Lake. 

Weirs, like many other gear types developed by the Indigenous people of the North American West Coast, are highly effective fishing tools. According to the Lake Babine Nation Fisheries, this weir supported an estimated annual harvest of 750,000 sockeye, sustaining a network of large villages while driving trade with other Nations. 

These tools also facilitated an intimate relationship between fish runs and the people they fed. Unlike the nets dropped into dark seas by a mixed-stock marine fishing fleet, fishers on a weir know where the salmon are going—and if enough have made it home to feed the community in the future. 

This weir supported an estimated annual harvest of 750,000 sockeye, sustaining a network of large villages while driving trade with other Nations. 

Lake Babine Nation Fisheries

For millennia, Indigenous selective fishing practices sustained diverse, abundant runs of salmon and steelhead. But in the 1880s, the federal government outlawed weir technology, forcing the closure of scores of First Nation fisheries. In 1905, federal fisheries managers finally dismantled the remote Babine Lake weir. This launched a dark era for the Nation—cut off from the wellspring of physical, economic, and community health, even as DFO appropriated the site for its own use in 1946.

 Nearly a century later, a swing toward reconciliation has seen the Lake Babine Nation regain significant control of their fisheries. Since 2007, co-management with DFO has meant the reopening of the Nation’s sockeye fishery, largely on its own terms. And once again, Indigenous fishing technologies are proving their worth.

“The Babine sockeye fishery was the largest in the province in 2022,” says Greg Taylor, a seafood industry and fisheries consultant with the Lake Babine Nation and other communities. “It shows the rest of the coast what’s possible—that you can have successful commercial fisheries and still meet your conservation goals.”

For Taylor, this work also feels personal. A former representative of B.C.’s commercial gillnet fleet, Taylor once rallied against calls for change. But like Knox, he’s also an angler who’s been moved to set aside his fly rod. 

“Over time, my views on conservation have certainly shifted,” Taylor says. “It’s been a journey. I used to fish the Skeena. But I’ve seen the steelhead declines. That’s changed as well.”

“The Babine sockeye fishery shows the rest of the coast what’s possible—that you can have successful commercial fisheries and still meet your conservation goals.”

Greg Taylor, fisheries advisor, FirstFirst Consulting

To save both steelhead and other salmon species, Taylor now believes that we must pivot to selective, in-river fisheries. It’s a shift that he says makes economic sense: the Lake Babine Nation sockeye fishery alone creates more than 50 jobs each season. It’s also highly practical.

“Really, let’s face it, all those fish are going to one place, and we know where they’re going,” Taylor says. “Why cast about in the ocean when we know where to catch them for sure?”

After a century of blind-hauling salmon from the sea, Knox and Taylor say we either change the way we fish, or lose the wild runs we love. From fish weirs to reef nets, beach seines to fish traps, some say the solutions have always been close to home. 

The future won’t look like the past. But according to Dr. Will Atlas, Wild Salmon Center’s Senior Watershed Scientist, the past can give us answers—particularly for steelhead.

For millennia, he says it’s likely that First Nations and Tribes harvested steelhead at much lower rates than other species: fishing practices in sync with the species’ lower overall abundance and heightened vulnerability. What we do know is that for millennia, steelhead thrived on the B.C. coast and beyond, evidenced in the rich genetic biodiversity that we’re just now beginning to comprehensively map. For thousands of years, wild fish runs thrived alongside the selective fishing technologies and practices used by Indigenous communities.

“Steelhead are highly adaptable, but they’re also perhaps the most susceptible of all salmonids to high harvest rates,” Dr. Atlas says. “Because their success hinges on repeat spawners, every steelhead that dies in a net at sea represents the loss of not one but multiple future generations.”

In the North Salish Sea, near the mouth of the Fraser River, the Lummi people built highly engineered reef nets. On the Klamath and Salmon Rivers of Northern California, Tribal elders still pass down the art of dip-netting to their children. And fish traps, like fish weirs, were widespread up and down the West Coast.

“These fishing techniques go back thousands of years,” Dr. Atlas says. “We know they worked, given the sheer abundance of salmon and steelhead at the point of Western contact. And they’re still here.”

“These fishing techniques go back thousands of years. We know they worked, given the sheer abundance of salmon and steelhead at the point of Western contact. And they’re still here.”

WSC Senior Watershed Scientist Dr. Will Atlas

And these traditional technologies are making a comeback.

The Lummi Nation, in partnership with local commercial seafood processors, is revitalizing reef nets in the North Salish Sea. On the Columbia River, an experimental pound net—a Western adaptation of traditional fish traps—is winning over chefs and fisheries managers alike. In Summer 2023, the Nuxalk Nation piloted a fish wheel to monitor and selectively harvest salmon on the Bella Coola River. And across B.C., Dr. Atlas and First Nations partners including the Heiltsuk and Gitanyow Nations are launching new artificial intelligence-enabled fish counting weirs that fuse traditional ecological knowledge with cutting-edge machine learning. 

“There’s a lot we still don’t know about steelhead,” Dr. Atlas says. “But a resurgence of Indigenous leadership in fisheries management across the North Pacific is now helping to fill in those data gaps, while giving steelhead room to recover.” 

“A resurgence of Indigenous leadership in fisheries management across the North Pacific is now helping to fill in data gaps, while giving steelhead room to recover.” 

WSC Senior Watershed Scientist Dr. Will Atlas

To save steelhead, Dr. Atlas says we should start with what’s worked for millennia: fishing selectively in rivers, closer to home. Knox agrees. It’s why, despite all the heartbreaking charts and  trendlines, he has hope.

“Steelhead are so resilient,” Knox says. “If we give them a chance, they can adapt. They can be here again in large numbers. And it might happen more quickly than we might expect.”

For that to happen, we first have to ask: is adaptation truly a trait we share with steelhead? If so, we’ll need to show it. Let’s fix the gauntlet of problems we’ve created for a magical species. Let’s fish smarter, as fellow creatures of coexistence.

“Steelhead are so resilient. If we give them a chance, they can adapt. And it might happen more quickly than we might expect.”

Greg Knox, SkeenaWild Executive Director

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Is this our moment to get it right for an extraordinary—and imperiled—species?

For as long as there have been Quileute people on the remote, rugged Olympic Coast, returning steelhead have signaled the end of what’s called “bad weather season,” and the beginning of fishing. In the Quileute language, early winter is literally known as “steelhead season.”

Some try to map the solar calendar onto this cycle, and peg steelhead season to a specific month. But that shifts the focus to Western ways of knowing, rather than the ancient bond between steelhead and the first people of the Pacific Northwest.  

“Fish, to us, it goes way back,” says Ann Penn-Charles, a member of the Quileute Tribe of the Quillayute River basin, prevention specialist, and teacher of the Quileute language. “If you took the fish away from the people, the people wouldn’t be able to feed their spirit. Fish are the heart of it.”

For Miss Ann, as she is known in the Quileute village of La Push, there isn’t a way to separate salmon and steelhead from the story of her family, her community, her history. 

There is her father, Christian “Jiggs” Penn, Jr., a fisherman, Korean War veteran, and lifelong advocate for Tribal fishing rights. And her grandmother, Lillian Payne Penn Pullen, who passed on the traditions of fish-handling, processing, and community spirit.

The story goes back farther, to her great great grandfather, one of the Quileute leaders who participated in the Treaty of Olympia in 1865. In this treaty, the United States government acknowledged the perpetual right of the Quileute people to hunt, fish, and gather in all “usual and accustomed places”—even as it sought to restrict Tribal members to a tiny reservation at the mouth of the Quillayute River. 

In 1974, Miss Ann’s father was the Quileute Tribe’s representative in U.S. vs. State of Washington, a landmark case led by Federal Judge George Boldt. Her father’s testimony, alongside dozens of other witnesses, convinced the judge to reaffirm treaty rights following more than a century of broken promises, harassment, disenfranchisement, and violent, capricious policing by non-Tribal authorities. In his ruling, Judge Boldt agreed with the plaintiffs that the Treaty of Olympia enshrined the right of signatory Tribes to co-manage fisheries across their traditional homelands.

In the five decades since the Boldt Decision remade Washington fisheries, Tribal, state, and federal agencies are still negotiating paths through these waters. Resource co-management is painstaking work, made harder by the weight of history.

Miss Ann is proud of what Quileute fisheries managers are doing to nurture the salmon and steelhead that return each year to the Quillayute River—from water temperature monitoring to natural infrastructure projects that aim to protect La Push while enhancing fish habitat. 

She’s keeping an eye on this work herself, monitoring new streamside replantings on her walks to collect items for medicine. And she enjoys hearing from fishers where salmon are showing up—especially if these are spots where her parents once were caretakers.

“As my father would paddle home with a canoe full of fish, he’d check certain areas to see how many fish were in the creeks,” Miss Ann recalls. “He’d get brush and put it along the banks, where he knew fish would spawn. My grandfather taught my father to heed all of the things taught to him. It takes all of us to be stewards of the land.”

The reward of good stewardship is health. For millennia, the flash of steelhead in rivers brightened the winters of the Quileute people—a sign of a thriving relationship. Now, with Indigenous leadership resurgent in fisheries management, Tribes and First Nations are reclaiming traditional spaces for hunting, foraging, and fishing, and their role as primary stewards.

But as the Quileute Tribe finally sees respect for sovereignty on land and water, something else has gone wrong. The steelhead are disappearing.

“If you took the fish away from the people, the people wouldn’t be able to feed their spirit. Fish are the heart of it.”

Ann Penn-Charles

Lillian Payne Penn Pullen loved steelhead, particularly smoked. Miss Ann remembers that about her grandmother, as well as her lessons on using all parts of the fish. 

Dwayne Pecosky, the Director of Quileute Natural Resources, also loves steelhead. That’s because along with his day job managing Tribal fisheries and restoration work—including an ambitious river rewilding project with Wild Salmon Center and other partners—he’s also an avid angler.

“It’s a special thing, seeing winter chrome come into the Quillayute Basin,” Pecosky says. “Steelhead are hard to catch. They call it the ‘fish of a thousand casts’—that’s the saying, but maybe I know it because I don’t catch a lot.” 

Pecosky laughs, and acknowledges that for him, it’s not really about catching fish. It’s enough just to float on a rainy winter day and know that steelhead are out there.

“You’re talking to a person who knows how amazing steelhead are in their behavior, their life history,” he says. “It’s incredible to be able to touch a winter steelhead and realize that it might have made it home, went back out to the ocean, jumped through all these hoops, and made it back home again.” 

“It’s incredible to be able to touch a winter steelhead and realize that it jumped through all these hoops, and made it back home again.” 

Dwayne Pecosky, Quileute Natural Resources Director

Unfortunately, steelhead are scarce in smokehouses these days. Instead, the Quileute Tribe is watching with concern as steelhead numbers drop, year after year.

“We know we’re doing the right things, and we’ll always put an emphasis on conserving for future generations,” Pecosky says. “The Tribe is doing what it can on the lower Quillayute, aiming to manage its fisheries with a meticulous eye.” 

The Tribe is worried enough that it’s taking drastic conservation measures—a reaction echoed in recent emergency rules adopted by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). In recent years, the co-managers have responded to low steelhead forecasts with a suite of seasonal actions for the recreational fishery, including mandatory catch-and-release and bans on bait fishing and fishing from boats. In 2020 and 2021, the Quileute and other Washington Coast Tribes voluntarily reduced steelhead fishing days by more than half.

When decisions are made to cut back fishing days, Pecosky says it’s important to remember that’s a very big deal for the community.

“We’re salmon people and fishing is a way of life for the Quileute Tribe,” he adds. “When a Tribe shuts down their treaty fishery, that’s instrumental in demonstrating the conservation concern.” 

In 2022, with steelhead forecasts again looking dire, coastal Tribes volunteered once more to reduce fishing days. Meanwhile, WDFW announced early steps to overhaul its steelhead management strategy entirely. The era of complacent fisheries management was over. Now, agencies—and fishers—need answers.

Up and down the Washington Coast, there’s no doubt that steelhead are in trouble. New research from Wild Salmon Center and our partners shows that steelhead have been in decline for decades—and perhaps more than a century, since the introduction of canneries, commercial fishing, logging, mining, and other ecosystem-altering practices.

These insights might seem obvious, in hindsight. But for Pacific Northwest fisheries managers, it hasn’t been easy to see the big picture. For these agencies, the earliest reliable steelhead spawning records date back just 40 years, to the early 1980s soon after the Boldt Decision.

Last year, one humble discovery showed us the bigger picture. Thanks to a team of scientists including WSC Director Dr. Matt Sloat, we can now track Olympic Peninsula steelhead to the late 1940s. What the data reveals is raising alarm bells all the way east to Washington, D.C.

Up and down the Washington Coast, there’s no doubt that steelhead are in trouble. Now, agencies—and fishers—need answers.

The discovery—a single dusty ledger in an Olympia office—didn’t look like much. But for Dr. Sloat and scientists from Trout Unlimited and NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Office, the ledger’s data unlocked a world of insights. Starting with the vast chasm between what steelhead runs might have looked like for Miss Ann’s father, as a young man in the 1950s, and what they are today.

“Olympic Peninsula steelhead are at a fraction of their historical abundance,” Dr. Sloat says. “Until now, we weren’t able to fully appreciate that loss, because our frame of reference only went back a few decades.”

The team found that between 1948 and 2017, wild winter steelhead numbers plummeted by at least 67 percent in the Quillayute River. In the neighboring Hoh, Queets, and Quinault systems, the rates were 80, 73, and 71 percent respectively. According to Dr. Sloat, the most recent data suggest that decline rates are accelerating.

Why are steelhead in such trouble? To answer that, Dr. Sloat and his colleagues are investigating a range of potential factors including ocean warming, hatcheries, and habitat loss. Recent breakthroughs in conservation genetics are revolutionizing this work, he says, enabling us to better grasp the steelhead biodiversity that so amazes anglers like Dwayne Pecosky. 

“For millions of years, steelhead have drawn on a range of life histories and behaviors to survive,” he says. “We’re just now beginning to understand what’s in that genetic toolkit.”

One of those tools is a drive within some steelhead to return months ahead of their fellows. These are the first freshwater arrivals in the height of winter—those heralds of fishing season for the Quileute people. But across the Olympic Peninsula, steelhead runs are losing their vanguard: a clue that somehow, critical biodiversity is getting lost.

Across the Olympic Peninsula, steelhead runs are losing their vanguard: a clue that somehow, critical biodiversity is getting lost.

“These early returners are simply not there anymore,” Dr. Sloat says. “This fact alone might shed some light on why it feels like steelhead are vanishing in plain sight.”

If we can learn why early returners are disappearing, he says that insight could help conservation scientists and fisheries managers develop powerful new recovery strategies. But good science takes time and resources. Meanwhile, for steelhead, the clock is ticking.

That’s why Dr. Sloat isn’t surprised that NOAA Fisheries is now considering the most dramatic move of all: listing Olympic Peninsula steelhead under the Endangered Species Act. 

This  winter, NOAA announced a 90-day review period, the first step in its formal review process. Should the process move forward to public comments, rulemaking, and a final decision, more sacrifices could be ahead—both for the sport fishers who flock to the Olympic Peninsula, and for Tribes like the Quileute. ESA listing could mean yet another renegotiation of fisheries co-management: an exhausting prospect for all involved.

But while ESA listing would add complexity, it could also unlock a new level of resources for Tribal and state fisheries managers: perhaps enough to pivot away from crisis mode, and toward a consensus-driven, science-based approach to long-term conservation.

“Sound science is key to getting steelhead recovery right,” Dr. Sloat says. “Because no solution that we come up with will work without everyone agreeing on the facts and pulling in the same direction.”

NOAA Fisheries is now considering the most dramatic move of all: listing Olympic Peninsula steelhead under the Endangered Species Act. 

Can we save steelhead? From La Push to Olympia to Washington, D.C., many are skeptical. When it comes to this priceless fish, our history is a fraught one. And conditions today aren’t necessarily different. Across the Pacific Northwest, and beyond, different fishing factions are often more comfortable pointing fingers than finding common ground.  

No one knows this history better than Miss Ann. And she thinks it’s high time we learn from it.

“We have to work together—sport and Tribal fishers, Washington State, everyone—to make sure that the mistakes of the past don’t happen in the future,” she says. “It will take all of us to make sure that our salmon and steelhead are here for the next seven generations.”

“We have to work together. It will take all of us to make sure that our salmon and steelhead are here for the next seven generations.”

Ann Penn-Charles

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Most summers, Washington’s Southern Resident orcas round Vancouver Island and follow the Haro Strait, just west of the San Juan Islands, chasing after home-migrating Fraser River salmon.

But as hungry orcas hunt the western Salish Sea, some salmon runs flow east, through areas where the families of the Lummi Nation have fished for generations. 

It’s a heartbreaking fact that the Salish Sea’s salmon runs aren’t nearly as abundant as they once were, along with the orcas that eat them. For some, that prompts talk of simply shutting down commercial salmon fisheries. But according to Ellie Kinley, a lifelong fisher and Lummi Nation citizen, that sort of sweeping action helps neither salmon nor orcas.

“I think there’s a lot of miscommunication out there when it comes to buying and eating salmon,” says Kinley. “We’re catching salmon in a terminal area. They’ve already passed through where our Southern Residents can eat them.” 

Instead, Kinley says, people should be celebrating the salmon that her family sells through brands like Lummi Island Wild and Salish Select. If you can find these salmon products at stores, she says, then you know that it comes from a fishery that is strictly managed to meet escapement goals. That means that before any fishing season opens for her family, several international agencies must first agree that enough spawning salmon have entered the Fraser River to maintain population targets.

“The beauty of fishing [like we do] is that we never get to fish unless enough fish go up the river,” Kinley says.

But multi-agency sign-off is just one reason why Kinley feels that conscientious diners should seek out her salmon. There’s also her family’s leading role in helping to drive a resurgence, here near Lummi Island, of reef net fishing: a traditional selective fishing technique that the Kinleys and others are now using as a way to harvest more abundant returning sockeye and pink salmon runs without harming vulnerable stocks—like the Fraser River Chinook that comprise a large part of the diet of Southern Residents orcas. 

For millennia prior to Western contact, Coast Salish families fished river systems like the Fraser, Nooksack, and Skagit with selective fishing techniques like pound nets, weirs, wheels, and beach seines. Specific reef net sites, generally located near river mouths, were handed down through generations of families living on or near the San Juan Islands and north to the Saanich Peninsula. 

“The Coast Salish people invented reef netting,” says Riley Starks, the founder of the 15-year-old seafood processor Lummi Island Wild and a lifelong crab and salmon fisher. “It’s a very humane and kind way to catch salmon.”

The technique, Starks explains, is a simple one—two boats anchored in the water, holding a large, submerged net between them at the lip of an artificial reef—traditionally made of stinging nettle bush and wild grasses. The reef passively funnels fish up and over to the net, and into the view of the fishers in the boats. Once fish are spotted, the net is lifted to just below the water line, and fishers hand-sort the catch.

“As a fisherman, when you want fish for yourself, you only want the highest quality,” says Starks. “With reef netting I could see how they handled the fish: you pick them up one at a time, you bleed them, you put them on ice right away. There’s very little trauma, there’s no unwanted mortality.”

By the early 1990s, Starks had bought his own reef net. Soon after, he met Ellie Kinley’s late husband Larry Kinley, a Lummi Nation elder with a vision for reconnecting his community with reef netting. Once the dominant fishing technique in these waters, traditional reef netting had been largely abandoned by Coast Salish families over the past several generations—and not by choice. 

That’s because back in 1897, California canning bosses convinced the Washington State Legislature to make reef nets illegal. These bosses quickly built canneries and pound nets near reef net sites managed by Coast Salish families for millennia, and zealously enforced the new reef net restrictions.

This pressure forced Indigenous communities to adopt different techniques to continue their fishing way of life. Today, for example, Ellie Kinley’s sons and other relatives help crew a family purse seiner and gillnet boat; reef netting, for them, is a new practice, one that they’re improving with modern fish tracking technology and other tools.

“Before he died three years ago, Larry Kinley said that ‘reef netting is the center of our culture and we must reclaim it,’” Starks said. “My guess is that in the next 20 years we’ll see more and more reef nets pop up. It’ll happen in the very slow, methodical way that Indigenous communities work.”

Helping to boost the use of reef nets are new fishing businesses that focus on revitalizing these traditional practices, including Lummi Island Wild and, now, Salish Select. Together, the companies work with about 12 reef nets—one of them owned by the Kinleys—and also partner with the Snohomish Tribe and Upper Skagit Tribe to source salmon selectively harvested via other traditional practices, like beach seining.

And demand is surging from vendors like New Seasons, where Lummi Island Wild smoked sockeye sells out fast. Patagonia Provisions, another big retailer, keeps upping its annual orders of Lummi Island reef netted pink and sockeye salmon. The purveyor, which has built its brand on sourcing and processing only regenerative, organic, and sustainable foodstuffs, is clearly a fan; product descriptions for its Lummi Island-sourced products—like pouched black pepper wild pink salmon and lightly smoked wild sockeye—open by proudly highlighting that they’re responsibly harvested.

But reef netting is still a small fishing community. Between that limited capacity and the fishing pressure on salmon runs further out at sea in mixed-stock fisheries, Lummi Island’s reef netters can’t always fill the orders they receive. The answer, Starks says, is reviving the Indigenous selective fishing practices that were once so widespread here, and helped maintain healthy fish populations for millennia.

“Twelve reef nets—it’s not enough,” Starks says. “This should again be the dominant fishing technique in the Salish Sea. The more I’ve seen what’s happened in the Salish Sea, the more I realize that reef netting has to be the future or we’re not going to be able to have a salmon fishery here.”

It’s a move that might make for many happy customers in the future, including those hungry Southern Resident orcas circling just a few clicks west.

WHAT IT IS: Reef netted wild pink, chum (keta), and sockeye salmon is harvested by a small community of Indigenous and non-Indigenous fishers near Lummi Island in the northeastern Salish Sea.

WHY IT’S KEY: Once the dominant fishing practice of Coast Salish people near Lummi Island, reef nets allow fishers to selectively harvest only target runs and release bycatch with minimal trauma and zero time out of water.

WHERE TO FIND: Reef netted Lummi Island salmon products are offered through brands like Lummi Island Wild and Salish Select and retailed by purveyors including New Seasons and Patagonia Provisions.

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For Dr. Andrea Reid, river ecology is a personal calling, one that’s taken her across the world. She’s paddled Ugandan rivers in dugout canoes and joined scientific expeditions to study Indigenous fisheries in the Philippines and Solomon Islands. She even founded a Canadian charity, Riparia, that focuses on connecting young Indigenous women and non-binary youth with freshwater science and water stewardship.

Now, Dr. Reid has the opportunity to reconnect with her own ancestral waters. In 2020, Dr. Reid, a citizen of the Nisga’a First Nation of British Columbia’s Nass River Valley, moved from Ottawa to Vancouver to guide the University of British Columbia’s new Centre for Indigenous Fisheries.

Raised on Canada’s eastern coast, on Prince Edward Island, Dr. Reid grew up with the Atlantic Ocean as her backyard. The family connections that ultimately drew her west followed complicated discoveries by her father—discoveries that speak to the generational trauma experienced by Indigenous communities in the land now known as Canada. 

“I grew up about as far [in Canada] from my home community as possible,” Dr. Reid says. “But through science, I’ve found my way back. The Nass River really does feel like a second home.”

Now, as a new Wild Salmon Center board member, Dr. Reid hopes to elevate the perspectives and knowledge systems of Indigenous salmon communities from the Nass River across the Pacific Rim.

Below, Dr. Reid shares more about her family roots, her research philosophy, and how her team is applying a Māori concept to assessing salmon habitat.

Dr. Andrea Reid, in her own words:

I would consider the Nass River my home waters, in the Nisga’a territory of British Columbia, although I grew up about as far from my home community as possible, on Prince Edward Island, in Eastern Canada.

My dad always suspected that he was Native, in part because of the insults he’d get as a child. His [non-Indigenous adoptive] parents were loving and great, but they did not have any information to share with him. So he went through that process in his twenties. He walked into INAC (Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada) and said he suspected they had a file on him. Through that he was able to find out that his mom had been looking for him, and he was able to reestablish contact.

It’s a challenging history. Indigenous people across this nation were forcibly removed from our roots. Many non-Indigenous folks in this country don’t have to face this harsh reality, but many Indigenous peoples do. 

I left Prince Edward Island when I was 17, to go to McGill University in Montreal: a huge change, going from my hometown of about 600 people to a city of millions. I knew I really loved science, physics, calculus. I really thought I might go into something more quantitative. But then I learned that being an ecologist was a job. I started volunteering in a research lab, and had an amazing mentor who kept escalating my involvement. I got into tropical ecology in Eastern Africa, and from there a whole bunch of National Geographic expeditions.

When it came time to work on my PhD, l realized I should be focusing on the Nass River, which really feels like a second home to me now. My work focuses on bringing together Indigenous knowledge and western science and tools, to better understand the state of our salmon.

This reflects the notion of “two-eyed seeing”—learning from both western systems and Indigenous knowledge systems in tandem, letting both knowledge systems stand side by side. Two-eyed seeing is a concept that comes from Mi’kmaq territory: Etuaptmumk as it’s known in Mi’kmaw. It’s fundamentally about seeing from multiple perspectives, bringing all kinds of evidence together for the benefit of all. This is a teaching that’s been carried by one Mi’kmaq Elder in particular, Dr. Albert Marshall from the community of Eskasoni, who has been a mentor to me.

Two-eyed seeing (Etuaptmumk as it’s known in Mi’kmaw) is fundamentally about seeing from multiple perspectives, bringing all kinds of evidence together for the benefit of all.

The Māori concept of the ‘double canoe’ and the Yolngu [in the Northern Territory of Australia] concept of the ‘two waters’ work in a similar way. Likewise, the Haudenosaunee have a beautiful two-row wampum belt that shows the ships of the Dutch and the canoes of the Haudenosaunee, co-existing in a shared river of existence. All of these have been used by Indigenous peoples to allow Western and Indigenous understandings to work together in equitable ways.

There is a long history of pluralism in Indigenous society that is not embraced by Western society in the same way. We do have a long history of secretly co-opting Indigenous knowledge or not acknowledging its role.

Salmon will be a pillar of my work going forward, along with the salmon people of the Pacific Northwest. We’re at a very early point of recognizing Indigenous fisheries science as its own discipline. When [Wild Salmon Center President] Guido Rahr approached me about joining the board, he told me about how WSC is looking to expand who is involved. I was interested for two main reasons, one being WSC’s focus on the whole Pacific Rim, and learning from the perspectives of people across that range. This is something that I’m working on at UBC’s Centre for Indigenous Fisheries.

We’re at a very early point of recognizing Indigenous fisheries science as its own discipline.

And the second, it might be selfish, but the Nass is a stronghold for both salmon and ooligan. It’s one of the last, and it’s critical for my community. I’ll be working on the Nass going forward, and I hope to work with WSC there as well.

One of the Centre’s first projects was brought to us by the First Nations Fisheries Legacy Fund, which has an interest in bringing to Coast Salish freshwater the Māori idea of a Cultural Health Index, which was designed to assess holistic health of waterways in Aotearoa [New Zealand]. Adapting that concept here might mean that we look at total salmon abundance from a cultural perspective, and not just a biological one. For example, elders may talk about the smell of the river, its flow and vitality. Or, the presence of cedars might be associated with areas where water quality is good for fish.

These are things that go beyond our ability to measure with a flow meter, but we can talk about them, and bring more inclusive methodologies into university research. We’re planning to develop this into a toolkit for other communities in this province and beyond to use. A holistic approach that will surely include salmon, as we are Salmon People up and down this coast!

Dr. Andrea Reid is an Indigenous fisheries scientist and conservation biologist based in Canada. In January 2021, she will be joining the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries as an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Fisheries Science.

Andrea combines ecological and social science methodologies, adopting an integrative approach to complex fisheries questions. She belongs to the Nisga’a Nation on British Columbia’s North Coast and has significant experience with Indigenous fisheries communities, practices, perspectives and issues in British Columbia as well as around the world (East Africa, Oceania, and Southeast Asia).

Andrea holds a B.Sc. in Environment and a M.Sc. in Biology from McGill University. She is currently co-supervised between Carleton University and the University of British Columbia for her Ph.D. in Biology centered on Pacific salmon fisheries and conservation. Her research and outreach are supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Royal Canadian Geographical Society and National Geographic Society.

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If your first thought about wild salmon is “delicious,” your next might be the image of big silver fish netted out at sea. It’s a common train of thought in marketing. If fresh is best, the concept goes, then surely what you want is a plump ocean salmon, caught before the rigors of home river migration.

But according to celebrated British Columbia chef Rob Clark, that idea misses the boat. And not just when it comes to sustainable seafood. It’s also about flavor.

“The world perceives ocean-caught salmon as somehow better than river salmon,” says Clark, the now-retired head chef of such past and present Vancouver seafood institutions as C Restaurant, Raincity Grill, and the Fish Counter. “But the strength of wild Pacific salmon are the varieties and textures from river to river. For a chef, it’s like working with a full palate.”

And that culinary nuance gets lost at sea. Marine fishers operate in “mixed-stock” fisheries, where countless migrating salmon stocks mingle before heading to home rivers up and down the Pacific coast. 

Contrast that with rivers, where fishers can gauge exactly which salmon runs they’re catching. Here, selective fishing gear types like pound nets and fish weirs are gaining traction. In-river “terminal fisheries” create an opportunity for chefs like Clark to showcase, say, sockeye salmon returning to Lake Babine versus the Fraser. And there’s an environmental justice piece to shifting commercial fisheries inland, where the fishing traditions of Indigenous salmon communities like the Sts’ailes First Nation of the lower Fraser River valley have been restricted—even criminalized—for generations.

“My goal now is to help every river product, especially one harvested in a sustainable way, earn the respect it deserves,” says Clark. “And I could not make a better product to embody this approach than Harrison River beach-seined keta.”

My goal now is to help every river product, especially one harvested in a sustainable way, earn the respect it deserves. And I could not make a better product to embody this approach than Harrison River beach-seined keta.”

Beach seining dates back thousands of years on B.C. rivers like the Koeye. And while it doesn’t appear in the fishing stories of Sts’ailes elders—unlike fish weirs, spears, and gaffs—it does have new formal approval from Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans as a selective fishing practice.

“Beach seining is a new method for us. We’ve evolved, kept up with the tools that are used nowadays,” says Sts’ailes Chief Ralph Leon (Sah-ahkw). Though, he adds, “the nets are really tough on your hands.” 

An upside is that it brings his community together, literally. Operating a beach seine takes a village, of sorts: first to drop a broad net into a churning pool of fish, and then to pull it like hell to the shallows, where bycatch fish like steelhead can be safely netted and released.

Operating a beach seine takes a village: first to drop a broad net into a churning pool of fish, and then to pull it like hell to the shallows, where bycatch fish like steelhead can be safely netted and released.

“Back in the day, we were able to pick and choose what species we wanted. Our grandparents would tell us what to catch, and we’d get scolded if we brought home the wrong kind, because our elders knew what was going on with the salmon,” says Chief Leon. “Those were the glory days. It was a time when our people were very healthy. Now, we’ve got to work together to save our chum. The health of my grandkids depends on it.”

Chum salmon—often sold in stores as keta—is a productive run on the Harrison River, a wide, slow, glacier-fed tributary of the lower Fraser. For the past few years, the Sts’ailes and Scowlitz First Nations have brought that run to market with River Select, a seafood processor and retailer that works exclusively with First Nations-operated selective, terminal fisheries. Harrison Select, the brand name of their fresh, canned, and candied keta salmon, brings in revenue for the Sts’ailes and Scowlitz communities. More importantly, it’s an opportunity to renew their historic stewardship of the river.

It’s early days for this young venture, says Sts’ailes Councilman Kelsey Charlie (Tixweltel), and his community is still debating the merits of launching a commercial fishery—especially with the strain on salmon runs throughout the North Pacific. 

But if there is one clear message that Charlie would send out into the world, it would be that the Sts’ailes First Nation has salmon stewardship woven into its DNA. Who better to manage this precious resource than the people who have done so successfully for thousands of years?

“Our law that has governed this land for so many years, we still honor it. We still carry out all the ceremonies and rituals that have so much meaning for us,” says Charlie. “We are still stewards of the land. It plays an integral role not just in our everyday lives, but in our potlatches and the food we share. It all comes from this land.”

For Chief Leon, it’s heartbreaking that many of the salmon his community honors every year, starting with the first salmon, spring Chinook, never make it home to the Harrison. While the Harrison’s chum runs might be fairly healthy, not all salmon bound for the Fraser River watershed are so lucky. Fraser spring Chinook in particular are at risk, due to factors that include predators, pollutants, and poorly monitored fisheries.

With selective fishing practices, these runs can be protected. Chef Clark visited a Harrison River beach seine a few years back and has vivid memories of the day’s bycatch: two wriggling steelhead that he helped to release back into the river, unharmed. 

“It doesn’t get more beautiful than that,” Clark says. And he and Chief Leon also agree on another point: this river fish is delicious.

“The chum that we fish are phenomenal for smoking, or canning, or for making candy,” says Chief Leon. “You can watch football or hockey and eat that candy all day.”

Clark would add another recipe to that list. “I’ve made fish and chips out of every salmon species out there, and the Harrison River keta is the best you’ll ever have—meaty like halibut, but with a lot more taste.”

Before he retired from Vancouver’s Fish Counter, Clark upgraded the restaurant’s fish and chips to keta and saw demand soar for this crowd-pleasing comfort food. Now in his home kitchen, he’s still experimenting with flavors, in his lifelong quest to expand the palates and passions of diners.

“River salmon just needs someone to highlight its qualities, and chefs play that role as food influencers, over and over,” Clark says, and laughs. “Otherwise, we’d all still be eating iceberg lettuce, right?”

River salmon just needs someone to highlight its qualities, and chefs play that role as food influencers, over and over. Otherwise, we’d all still be eating iceberg lettuce, right?”

WHAT IT IS: Harrison Select Beach-Seined Keta is the market name for chum salmon products harvested by the Sts’ailes and Scowlitz First Nations of British Columbia and processed and retailed by River Select.

WHY IT’S KEY: In-river “terminal fisheries” allow fishers to know what they’re catching and use selective fishing methods that minimize harm to vulnerable or endangered species. Beach seining, a selective fishing practice approved by Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, is used by the Sts’ailes and Scowlitz First Nations in their Harrison River fishery.

WHERE TO FIND: River Select products are available for online purchase. Look soon for new Spring 2021 products from a range of First Nations selective terminal fisheries, including smoked canned keta and candied pink salmon from Harrison Select.

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On December 8, the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife announced important emergency regulations for steelheaders. Effective Dec. 14 through April 30, fishing on coastal waters from a floating device is prohibited, as is bait fishing, with catch-and-release now mandatory for all riverine rainbow trout.

The temporary rules follow alarming predictions that, for the fourth consecutive year, steelhead on many Washington rivers will again fail to meet winter escapement goals. (Escapement is defined by scientists as sufficient adult fish reaching spawning grounds to sustain populations.) With steelhead fishing closed on most other Washington rivers, fishing pressure has dramatically increased in recent years on coastal rivers like the Quillayute system, one of the few still projected to meet escapement this year.

Jess Helsley, Wild Salmon Center’s Washington Director, has seen that exact scenario play out in recent years: a ban on steelheading in one river simply concentrates fishers in the precarious few rivers on the positive side of the escapement margin.

“Washington steelhead lovers know that these declines are nothing new,” Helsley says. “If we want to save our state fish, while providing some opportunities to pursue the thrill of the catch, we must step up and take decisive action this season to limit our interaction with these incredible fish.”

Washington Tribes have been proactive about addressing steelhead declines. For the past two years, coastal Tribes have reduced the number of days they fish by over fifty percent. Now it’s time for non-Tribal salmon managers to support these steps and join the Tribes, Helsley says.

This past year, Wild Salmon Center, along with Tribal co-managers and other conservation groups, has opened a dialog with WDFW aimed at expanding its decision-making criteria. Traditionally, the agency has focused on abundance, and the amount of harvest a population can theoretically withstand. But the agency is now considering additional criteria for managing coastal steelhead. These criteria—productivity, distribution, and diversity—provide a foundation for working toward broader population resiliency, which benefits all fishing communities over the long term.

Washington’s new, temporary steelhead guidelines reflect WDFW’s openness to new conservation measures, Helsley says. Now, it’s time for anglers to step up and do the right thing.

“We’re committed to turning the tides this season,” says Helsley. “We know the hard work is just beginning.”

Washington’s new, temporary steelhead guidelines reflect WDFW’s openness to new conservation measures. Now, it’s time for anglers to step up and do the right thing.

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