By Joe Scordino, Project Leader
Edmonds Stream Team
March 12, 2025
Photos by Clint Wright, Joe Scordino, and John Brock
The Edmonds Stream Team released 5,000 “baby” chum salmon into lower Shell Creek on Monday. These chum salmon “fry” were donated by the Suquamish Tribe to help the community effort to bolster salmon populations in local creeks that flow directly to Puget Sound.
This community salmon enhancement program, authorized under Cooperative Agreements between the Washington Dept. 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 (see EEC Blog post 1-1-2025), 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 (see EEC Blog post 11/20/2024).
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 imprinting to this creek before heading out to sea.
This contrasts with coho salmon fry which spend the first year of their life in the creek. The chum salmon that survive life at-sea will return as adults in 3 to 4 years to spawn in Shell Creek.
Video of chum fry after release in Shell creek:
