FishHead Friday - A Drying Rainforest and Dying Fish

The Hoh River at record low flows.

All photos by John R. McMillan

Climate change was once something abstract and obtuse. Something for the next generation to deal with.

Like a teenager trying to fully conceptualize the realities of mortality, it was only a possibility. It won’t happen to me. There’s nothing to fear right now.

No longer.

A new reality is upon us, and frankly, it has been for a while. It’s just taken humanity a minute to accept it.

Personally, this dates back to 1988 when I was a junior in high school. Coming off a series of years in which steelhead had amazing ocean survival and ample streamflows, and being young and inexperienced, I wrote off the dry years as nothing more than a blip on the radar.

Everything would return to normal, I thought.

Acknowledging the change

It wasn’t until 2002 that, again after a succession of good ocean years for the Quillayute River steelhead, I came to fully accept normal was relative. That summer and early-fall the rain didn’t arrive on the west end of the Olympic Peninsula (OP) until November 5. It was also hot.

Hoh River at approximately 250 cfs.

As a result, numerous streams broke their low flow records and the streamflow gage on the Hoh River became inoperable because of the low streamflows.  Water temperatures during the summer and early fall of 2002 exceeded 80°F for short periods in the Bogachiel, Sol Duc, and Calawah Rivers. Juvenile and adult fish perished. Even the venerable, glacial-fed Hoh River regularly exceeded 70-72°F.

Recreational and tribal fisheries eventually closed to protect adult salmon that were trapped in the low flows. We even managed to get a work crew from a local prison to help move rocks and use sandbags to deepen shallow riffles in the lower Hoh, all in hopes of providing salmon an easier path upstream.

Worse, by October many smaller tributaries had gone dry for long sections. But so did some larger tributaries, like the NF Calawah River, a key location for spawning and rearing salmon and steelhead in the Calawah River basin.

Two droughts - 20-years apart

Nearly all of the lower NF Calawah River has gone dry.

The NF Calawah is an interesting stream. It runs for 21 miles through narrow valley that funneled the great fire of 1951 from the upper Sol Duc River to within a few football fields of the city of Forks.

Beginning in the middle of summer a significant portion of the stream annually goes subsurface, a phenomenon that has long been described in traditional language and stories by the Quileute Tribe. The section of the stream that goes dry is about 8 miles long and is located in the middle of the river from river-mile 7 to river-mile 15 (give or take a mile depending upon annual variation).

During the drought of 2002 the NF Calawah went dry for the vast majority of the lower 7-miles

That year, myself and James Starr snorkel surveyed the entire NF prior to the drying event so we were able to estimate how many fish perished. Based on that survey, about 77% of the population of juvenile and adult salmonids in the lower NF Calawah River died, including almost a total loss of steelhead and coho fry and the vast majority of whitefish and coastal cutthroat trout. The only survivors were in the lower wetted ¾ mile of stream.

Coho and steelhead rebuilt over time, but the populations of cutthroat, resident rainbow trout, and whitefish never recovered to their former status.

NF Calawah looking more like a road than a river in one of the more heavily used steelhead spawning reaches.

This year, despite the promising rain of early summer, the NF Calawah went dry again – but even worse than in 2002.  Not only did the lower river go dry for most of the 7-miles, so did the upper river for almost a mile, leaving behind a total of about 2.5 miles of wetted stream out of 21 total miles.

Even the deepest pool, which is about 15’-20’ deep in late spring, went bone dry.

Only two pools remain wetted, one of which is too toxic for fish and the other contains all of a few hundred juveniles. The lucky ones that stumbled into the only survivor’s pool.

A close up of 100’s of dead juvenile coho and steelhead.

Given the more extensive drying this year, it’s likely the fish kill was worse than in 2002.  I would estimate the stream lost about 90% of the fry from last season’s steelhead redds. A scary proposition for populations of winter steelhead that are struggling.

A juvenile Pacific Lamprey taking its last breaths on a stack of dead juvenile coho.

A broader perspective

Of course, the problems extend well beyond the NF Calawah. Many smaller creeks and main-stem river side-channels in the Quillayute and Hoh River watersheds also went dry for long sections, and the upper SF Calawah and Sol Duc are down to a mere 4’ and 10’-15’ of wetted width in some areas, respectively.

The Hoh and Queets Rivers are also a shadow of their former selves.

In some side-channels I observed as many as 5,000 - 10,000 steelhead fry perish over the course of the summer.

Drought waits for no River. Or fish.

It’s not just about the loss of juveniles and cutthroat, however. Streamflows are so low most spring/summer Chinook salmon excavated their redds right in the thalweg because those were the only locations that had sufficient flow for spawning. That is the worst possible place to spawn. Once the high flows of fall and winter arrive, many – if not the majority – of those redds will likely be scoured or buried.

Last, this is a double whammy for the Quillayute system and Calawah in particular. Last November the Calawah experienced its high flow of record, now, just months later, it has experienced record low flows.

The Hoh isn’t in any better position. Many of its important tributaries have gone partially subsurface or are so low they cannot support more than a few juveniles per riffle or pool. And the mainstem is also far too skinny, its riffles look like the ribs on a starving dog.

Hoh River near Minnie Petersons Campground at record low flow.

Nature has taken a mighty swing with Thor’s hammer this year, almost all of which is bad news for our salmon and steelhead.

This was on my mind the other evening as I tuned into the WDFW steelhead town hall. The smell of thousands of dead juveniles remained vivid. 

I wondered: Do any of those anglers and guides crying out for more fishing during bleak times have any clue?

It’s a rhetorical question. Of course they don’t. The only time they spend on the river is during the fishing season and the only places they know are the drifts they float for steelhead and salmon. They don’t spend any time in the creeks or the upper sections of rivers They don’t snorkel or walk streams. And most aren’t around in summer. 

Hoh River running as clear as it ever gets.

And this is why it is challenging to manage fish and fisheries with angry vagabond guides and orphaned anglers. They simply aren’t aware of the threats, old and new, these fish deal with across the entire year.

Ultimately, many are in denial, just like I was back in the 1980’s.

Adapting to a new normal

Unfortunately, truth waits for no one.

Sol Duc River, famed for winter steelhead, almost goes dry in mid-October of 2022.

Our climate is changing faster than scientists predicted, which is why it is critical we begin to include effects of climate change in our conservation and management.

Steelhead and salmon currently live in drier and warmer areas than the OP.  But the fish were abundant and diverse, and they had thousands of years to evolve and adapt to those climates.

Now, depleted in abundance and diversity, they are behind the eight-ball. They don’t have thousands of years, and consequently, they are struggling to keep pace.

While we can’t control the climate right now, we can take other measures to give the fish the best shot at persistence. For example, we can increase escapement goals to put more fish on the spawning grounds. More abundant populations are generally more diverse and occupy a greater range of habitats within a watershed.  We could also prioritize recovery of depleted diversity in steelhead, such as rebuilding early-entering winter runs and increasing levels of repeat spawning.  And we can reduce releases of maladapted, less diverse hatchery fish that survive at much lower rates than wild salmonids.

Habitat restoration will also be key, particularly in main-stem rivers that have experienced the deleterious effects of forest practices and road building for over 100 years. To date, most restoration actions have focused on smaller creeks and culvert replacement. While those efforts are important, many of those creeks are almost entirely dry right now, and it will only get worse in the future. 

Which is why we also need to increasingly restore larger, main-stem rivers, because those are the most productive habitats during the low flows of summer.  That is why logjams and large wood are critical. They can help consolidate streamflow and create deeper, more complex pools that could support fish during times of drought.

Winfield Creek, one of the most important spawning tributaries to the Hoh River is also nearly dry.

The lower Elwha River, and the work by Mike McHenry with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, provides a great example of using large wood to improve channel structure and habitat complexity.  It might not be as visually pleasing as the natural logjams, but the fish don’t care, and that is what matters the most.

2100 and beyond

2100 may seem like a long way off, but it’s only 12-16 generations of steelhead.

Nonetheless, the future is difficult to predict.

The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica could collapse in the next decade and dramatically increase sea levels. Maybe the Atlantic Current continues to weaken and the climate of the North Atlantic becomes far more extreme. 

One thing we do know is that things are changing.  By 2100 the climate on the OP will be more similar to the coastal area around the border of Oregon and California.

I wonder what species will begin to predominate in the changing OP forests? What will the riparian zones look like? How many streams will go subsurface in late summer and early fall?

While I can’t answer those questions without experiencing 2100, we can begin to embrace the challenges presented by the new reality and plan for a different future. 

If we don’t change and adapt, wild salmonids, particularly those most reliant upon anadromy, will continue to whither. If we stick to the status quo with a death grip on tradition, the next generation of anglers will lose their opportunity.

I want to avoid this at all costs. Which is why I believe bold action is necessary.

Wild salmon and steelhead have given us more than we could possibly ever repay. Now, it is time for us to give back. To think less about next year’s run and more about the totality of the future we want to leave behind.

We are the biggest hurdle between a future with wild fish and one without. 

We are the shield that guards the realm of wild fish.