At the Piper’s Creek Salmon Celebration, Seattleites of all ages hiked up and down Piper’s Creek and peek into the waters below to see the salmon surging through the water. The Nov. 23 event also included activities for children, informational programming by local organizations and folk dancing. Bert the Salmon, a mascot raising awareness about common causes of pollution in waterways, also made an appearance for photos. Attendees swarmed the booths set up on the creekside, while the main event raged on in the water.
People in blue vests, known as Salmon Stewards, prowled around Piper’s Creek, answering questions about the salmon run. The Salmon Stewards program began as a partnership between Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle Parks and Recreation.
Jen Levy was a Salmon Steward returning for her third year, and noted that the amount of salmon this year was about double the size of surveys during previous years. She emphasized the role that humans play in the success of each salmon run.
“It’s a really good example of how humans have come and interacted with streams that originally supported salmon, how the watershed can affect the salmon that are running here and what we can do as homeowners and humans in general to keep the watershed cleaner,” Levy said.
A salmon run is the migration of salmon from their ocean habitat back to the freshwater habitat where they were born. Once they make their way upstream they will spawn and die, providing valuable nutrients to the ecosystem. The salmon running in Piper’s Creek were almost all chum salmon, the second-largest salmon species out of the five that live in North America. Each year, salmon are hatched and donated by the Suquamish Tribe to grow in Carkeek Park. Upon birth the fish imprint on the stream so that they will return once they are mature.
Extensive human involvement is necessary for the Carkeek Park salmon run due to its complex history and location as an urban ecosystem. Bill Malatinsky, program manager for RainWise at Seattle Public Utilities, explained that at one point in the 1920s, the creek was devoid of salmon. Grassroots activity began in the 1980s to return the fish to the creek, and now the Suquamish Tribe donates 70,000 young salmon to the cause each year.
“It’s not a natural run of fish, and that’s a common misconception that people have… we sort of see it as an educational salmon run,” Malatinsky said.
Originally, salmon runs in Piper’s Creek hosted chum and coho salmon. Coho salmon are more sensitive to pollutants that run into the water from roadways and other urban developments, so the run has had the most success with chum salmon due to their resilience. Even so, the number of salmon returning to spawn each year is not yet self-sustaining and requires constant upkeep, as it is part of a complex urban environment.
Lindsay Whitlow, a professor of biology at Seattle University, teaches courses on ecology and examines human interaction with the environment. The Piper’s Creek Salmon Celebration highlights the culmination of a successful salmon-rearing program, but also the work done to rehabilitate Carkeek Park.
“It’s a perpetual job if we want to have healthy urban ecosystems… It’s worth people recognizing that it’s going to take work consistently,” Whitlow said.
Organizations tabling at the Salmon Celebration showed off volunteer water testing programs and changes that community members can make in their lives that positively impact the local environment.
The salmon run can also be visited outside of the Piper’s Creek Salmon Celebration. Thomas Pool, an associate professor of biology at Seattle U, specializes in aquatic ecology and has taken his classes to Carkeek Park for four years. Before he taught college-level courses, Pool was also involved with the environmental education summer camp at the creek, which similarly fostered an interest in ecology for attendees. Pool believes that Carkeek Park’s proximity to the city is an incentive to get involved with conservation.
“There’s often this idea of pristine systems being somewhere else, that nature is somewhere else… That instantly disenfranchises people from being engaged in nature and conservation. We can chip away at a challenge through educational programs, through outreach, and getting folks down to the park… and then we can take little steps forward,” Pool said.
Carkeek Park is a 20-minute car ride or hour-long transit route from Seattle U’s campus. The Salmon Stewards have their final weekend at the park Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, as the salmon run is expected to peter out by the middle of December.
