Another week of surveying, another unbelievable amount of live salmon and carcasses to process. If you haven’t been down to Carkeek to see the salmon yet this year, it’s quite the sight. Thanks volunteer salmon surveyors for putting in long hours.
Word’s clearly gotten out about the record Carkeek salmon run with the Seattle Times, Fox 13 Seattle and KNKX writing articles about the Carkeek run. These media stories have led to a spike in park visitors all teeming with questions about the salmon. We’ve had a ton of great visitor interactions this year fielding questions about salmon life cycle, water quality, beavers, as well as questions about environmental responsibility and how government action/inaction can affect our environment.
Since we’ve accumulated a great deal of data already this year it’s time to do a deep dive into what we’re seeing.
First off it appears we’re a little bit past the peak of live fish as our carcass numbers have spiked while our live numbers have dropped off a bit. The 1545 live chum we counted on 11/12 still seems unbelievable but the huge numbers of carcasses we’re seeing are making it very believable. While the live numbers appear to be dropping we’re still in the stratosphere compared to other survey years.
We’re currently seeing 55% of our chum salmon fully spawning or partially spawning. This is a 2% dip from 2023 which itself had a large drop from 2022 (82%) and 2021 (88%). Coho spawning continues to sit around 10% fully or partially spawning, similar to 2023 (13%) and 2021 (10%).
What might be causing this low spawning rate for chum? We’re not sure. Last year’s low spawning success rates were probably attributable to the salmon being unable to reach good spawning areas until later on in the season. This year’s low spawning rate could be due to increased siltation of the creek or increased competition for spawning areas due to the large number of fish returning.
Carkeek Park always seems to be a tough place for Coho salmon to spawn. Freshly dead Coho with bright red eggs like below are a common sight. (photo by Kim Menhorn).
Chum predation rate has dropped from 35% in 2023 all the way down to 16%. With 5x more fish this year it’s unlikely the predators can keep up. As the graphs indicate the predators still appear to prefer Coho. We often see Coho females with bellies ripped out by predators. This is one of the reasons we have so many Coho where we’re unable to determine spawning status.
| Survey Date | Live Chum | Dead Chum | Live Coho | Dead Coho | Live Cutthroat | Dead Cutthroat | Live Unknown | Dead Unknown |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-10-19 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024-10-22 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| 2024-10-29 | 30 | 27 | 1 | 10 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 1 |
| 2024-11-02 | 251 | 14 | 4 | 15 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 1 |
| 2024-11-05 | 510 | 51 | 3 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2024-11-09 | 661 | 101 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2024-11-12 | 1545 | 236 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 2 |
| 2024-11-16 | 1045 | 294 | 7 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024-11-19 | 1055 | 364 | 9 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Yearly Chum Total | Chum Calc Date | Yearly Coho Total | Coho Calc Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2143 | 2024-11-19 | 80 | 2024-11-19 |
Our historical chum record was 975 in 2022. We’ve already processed over 1000 chum carcasses this year and there’s plenty of season left.
These scatter plots are interactive. Locations are approximate and based on where the data recorder is standing. Not all entries will have location set
Gone are the days of last year where most salmon were spotted less than 500 ft up Piper’s Creek. We have a fairly even distribution this year with salmon reaching both Venema Creek and Mohlendorph Creek.
Happy salmon spotting!