EDMONDS – A determination had yet to be made as of May 26 regarding what killed as many as many as 9,500 fingerling salmon three days earlier at the Deer Creek Salmon Hatchery in Edmonds.
Cutthroat trout upstream in adjoining Willow Creek – water from which the hatchery cycles in and out of its fingerling holding pond – were also found dead, officials said.
The state Department of Ecology (DOE) was running tests on the creek and hatchery water and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was running tests on the dead fish to determine what may have killed them, said Larry Altose, a spokesman for the DOE. Results were expected around the end of this week.
The fish were found dead Sunday morning, May 23, said Walt Thompson, hatchery coordinator for the Laebugten Salmon Chapter, which operates the hatchery on Pine Street near the Unocal marsh. The club hatches about 80,000 coho salmon per year at the hatchery and releases them in Swamp and North creeks. It also hatches 30,000 salmon annually in a pen near the Edmonds Fishing Pier and releases them into Puget Sound.
About 70,000 of the fingerlings had recently been taken out and released, Thompson said. The 10,000 that remained were scheduled to be released in early June, following an annual open house at the hatchery that is part of the Edmonds Waterfront Festival. About 500 survived. The fish were hatched in January, and the salmon chapter will have to wait until next year to hatch new fingerlings, Thompson said.
After the dead fingerlings were discovered, city of Edmonds crews and investigators from the DOE hiked up the creek to investigate. Willow Creek is relatively short, beginning as an underground spring in a residential neighborhood northwest of the Westgate shopping area, said city public works director Noel Miller. It then flows west, through a culvert under Highway 104, through part of Woodway and then north alongside the hatchery and into the marsh. An outlet from the marsh empties into Puget Sound at Marina Beach.
Investigators with the DOE are trying to identify the source of the spill, Altose said. One technique is to determine at what point on the creek the dead fish began to be found. “The signs are consistent with something unusual,” he said.
He said it could be a number of things, such as petroleum, chemical or some other type of water pollution. It could be someone overfertilizing their lawn, pet waste, soil erosion, “a lot of people washing their cars” or a combination of things, he said.
If someone is found to have been negligent and failed to use spill prevention techniques, it’s possible to levy a fine, Altose said. In commercial areas, the types of businesses nearby can be compared to the substance found in the water to narrow down the possibilities, he said. In residential areas, “it’s really hard to find the smoking gun in that situation.” The DOE encourages anyone with information to call the department at 425-649-7000.
When the fish were found, Thompson said, the water was kind of a dirty, opaque brown, “a different color than you would normally see.” By the next day, it had cleared.
Thompson doubted that the incident was a malicious act aimed at the hatchery. “A lot of people don’t even know we’re here,” he said.
“I’m sure it’s an accident, but it might be a big, stupid accident.”
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