The Students Saving Salmon has grown from a handful of students in 2015 to over 70 students that currently engage in local conservation activities. Students have voluntarily collected monthly water quality measurements (e.g., dissolved oxygen, temperature, pH, conductivity, nitrates, turbidity) and habitat observations in local creeks and the Edmonds Marsh for almost five years.
This data has been used by students to report on watershed conditions to the Edmonds City Council each year along with recommendations on aspects needing local government attention. In some instances, students have used their observations to develop and implement plans for action to fix habitat problems.
For example, over several years students documented conditions at a partially blocked culvert that was affecting salmon passage. Lacking governmental action to resolve the problem, in the summer of 2018, Students Saving Salmon obtained WDFW and local authorizations to work with the property owner to amass a successful volunteer effort to clear the culvert of willow tree roots that had grown into and were blocking flow in the culvert. In the fall of 2018, upstream property owners (above the culvert) cheerfully reported they were again seeing coho salmon in the creek.
Students have also worked with private property owners to restore streamside habitat and have planted over 650 native plants along Shell Creek since 2017. Noting that salmon numbers were declining in the creeks, students began efforts to enhance the salmon runs in 2017. This began with getting WDFW authorization to place juvenile coho in upper areas of the creek that were blocked to adult passage and has expanded to students getting WDFW authorization to use instream salmon egg incubators to increase salmon numbers and utilize stream habitat that is otherwise inaccessible to adult salmon. These incubators were successfully used last winter (2018/19) with 89% hatching survival (which is better than wild egg survival).
Last winter (2019/2020), students installed instream incubators in Shell, Willow and Lunds Gulch Creeks with 5,000 coho salmon eggs and 4,000 chum salmon eggs and are hoping for even better survival through location improvements based on past years observations. In addition, Students Saving Salmon has conducted outreach on salmon and the environment at numerous community events and clubs (such as fishing groups, Rotary, and other community groups).
