Rains sweeping across Kitsap last week may have arrived too late to help tens of thousands of salmon wriggling up streams to spawn.
Late October and early November were marked by dry weather that settled in just as chum and coho were gathering at creek mouths around the peninsula. Suquamish Tribe fisheries biologist Jon Oleyar said water levels were "extremely low" in east Kitsap creeks and salmon have struggled to reach accustomed spawning grounds.
"Our peak spawning happened last week," Oleyar said in an email Tuesday. "Although there wasn’t much water, the fish spawned where they could."
Stragglers could still benefit from the showers now arriving.
"The forecasted rain coming is great, but most likely will not help the majority of fish already spawning," Oleyar said.
Salmon returns are below average in some Kitsap streams, while others have seen no fish at all.
Chico Creek, which once welcomed home 30,000 salmon each fall, will be lucky to have 10,000 return this year, Oleyar said, and low flows have forced fish to concentrate in the main channel instead of dispersing into spawning habitat higher in the watershed. Lost Creek, an upper tributary of Chico, has had about 100 fish when it would usually have thousands.
The situation was similar in Barker Creek, where about 25 fish were reported last week.
"We typically see hundreds, if not a thousand in there," Oleyar said.
Dry summer, dry fall
As far as rainfall totals go, 2018 started out as a fairly normal year, said Reid Wolcott, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Seattle. But a damp spring gave way to a dry summer, and the typical mid-October downpours never showed up.
"We've slowly drifted below normal and we've stayed there," Wolcott said. "That's largely due to a dry summer and, more significantly, a dry fall."
A rain gauge in Silverdale recorded 5 inches of rain in October and November this year, as of Friday morning, according to Kitsap Public Utility District. The same gauge collected 14 inches over the same period of last year. Silverdale trailed 2017's year-to-date rainfall total by 15 inches.
Wolcott said a relatively dry fall was expected, in keeping with a weak El Niño weather pattern. Rain returned to Kitsap on Wednesday and a series of wet weather systems are forecasted to roll across the peninsula over the next week.
Oleyar said the late-arriving showers could both help and hurt salmon. Fish still working their way up creeks should benefit from higher water levels, but a heavy rainfall can scour away redds (nests of eggs laid in stream beds).
"I am holding my breath that we don’t get too much," Oleyar said.
