By Joe Scordino
For the Beacon
Posted 3/20/25
The Edmonds Stream Team released 5,000 baby chum salmon into lower Shell Creek on Monday. The Suquamish Tribe donated the salmon fry to help the community effort to bolster salmon populations in local creeks that flow directly to Puget Sound.
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Although Shell Creek had a record return of spawning chum salmon this past fall, many of their eggs laid in the creek’s gravel were likely smothered by sediment and silt caused by increased City stormwater flows into Shell Creek.
This community salmon enhancement program, authorized under cooperative agreements between the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Edmonds Stream Team, and Sound Salmon Solutions, will in coming months also involve releasing coho salmon from the Edmonds’ Willow Creek Salmon Hatchery to Perrinville Creek, Lunds Gulch Creek (in Meadowdale Beach Park), Boeing Creek, Northstream Creek, Willow Creek, Shellabarger Creek, and Shell Creek (in Yost Park and private properties).
Although Shell Creek had a record return of spawning chum salmon this past fall, many of their eggs laid in the creek’s gravel were likely smothered by sediment and silt caused by increased City stormwater flows into Shell Creek.
The sediment flow was so bad in 2024 that it filled and blocked the creek under a long-standing bridge, requiring emergency action to allow fish passage.
The Suquamish Tribe’s chum salmon fry will stay in Shell Creek, along with the same-age chum fry hatched in the creek, for up to two weeks before heading out to sea.
This contrasts with coho salmon fry that live in the creek for the first years of their lives.
The chum salmon that survive life at sea will return as adults in three to four years to spawn in Shell Creek.
Joe Scordino is project leader for the Edmonds Stream Team.