11-13-2021 Salmon Survey Update

The salmon run is holding strong in Carkeek Park. The creeks were flush with live salmon during the survey today with many of the viewpoints offering great views of spawning salmon. We should be near the peak of the run but expect several more weeks of salmon at Carkeek.

Some trends of interest from the data today (11/13/21) when compared to Wednesday (11/10/21):

  1. 80% less dead/live Coho
    • This is expected as we typically see Coho numbers peak and decline before the Chum. With the large number of live fish there may still be live Coho in the creek.
  2. Roughly the same number of dead Chum compared to Wednesday
    • While we would expect to see higher numbers of dead in later surveys, because the 11/6 survey was cancelled the number of dead found Wednesday is a bit inflated.
  3. 5% more live salmon compared to Wednesday 
    • More live salmon and a decent number of dead indicates there are still plenty of new salmon entering Piper’s Creek.

 

 

We’re still in the peak of the salmon run and today saw the greatest number of live fish of any of our surveys so far this year.

As we seem to be seeing less Coho let’s take a look at their spawning success so far. The percentages don’t look great for them with almost 70% unspawned, meaning the vast majority of their eggs/milt were remaining with them upon death. Keep in mind Coho are a small fraction of the salmon return we typically see with only 5% of the run last year being Coho. Coho historically have low spawning success in Carkeek park. This may be due to a multitude of factors with one being the limited number of returning Coho to Carkeek.

Survey Totals

Note: Total live salmon includes Sea-Run Cutthroat and Unknowns – entries where surveyors were unable to determine the species. Remnants are included in dead counts.
Survey Date Total Live Salmon Live Chum Dead Chum Live Coho Dead Coho Live Cutthroat Dead Cutthroat Redds
2021-10-23 8 6 0 1 0 0 0 0
2021-10-26 33 27 0 4 3 1 0 3
2021-10-30 56 44 9 1 5 0 0 2
2021-11-02 95 91 12 1 4 1 0 14
2021-11-10 471 471 44 0 10 1 0 34
2021-11-13 497 496 43 1 1 0 0 11

Yearly Totals

Note: Yearly total is the survey date where (day’s live + dead up to date) is max
Salmon Chum Coho Based on survey
631 604 24 2021-11-13

A huge thank you to all salmon survey volunteers for gathering this data!

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