Monitor forage fish populations to inform decisions on harvest and management actions that provide for sufficient feedstocks to support increased abundance of Chinook.

Action 1

Map herring, smelt, and sand lance spawning areas throughout Puget Sound to determine how abundant these food sources for Chinook salmon are. Surveys should be conducted in conjunction with restoration and protection of forage fish spawning habitat.

Action 2

Fund inventories of existing and planned forage fish harvest levels to determine potential impact on Chinook.

• The Governor and Legislature should continue to provide funding for forage fish surveys to identify and map the critical habitat used by herring, surf smelt, and sand lance in Puget Sound. These surveys provide the only measure of abundance for any species of Puget Sound forage fish by estimating the spawning biomass of more than 20 herring stocks. Results of surveys inform shoreline development, protection, and restoration decisions that affect these species. The studies should be coordinated with efforts such as the Ocean Ecosystem Indicators work by the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, the Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program, and other regional ecosystem and forage fish efforts.
• Ongoing funding should be provided to the Washington Department of Natural Resources’ Puget Sound Corps Program and to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to implement the surveys.
• The Governor also should provide ongoing funding for the Department of Fish and Wildlife to inventory existing and future forage fish harvest levels in Puget Sound and assess impacts to their populations resulting from varying levels of harvest.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife receives funding in their biennial budget to support this recommendation and has used the funding as follows:

• Worked with the Washington Conservation Corps to research and monitor forage fish and their habitat. This work started in 2013. Since then, the department has trained more than sixty young adults and military veterans and processed more than fourteen thousand forage fish beach spawning habitat samples.
• Surveyed herring. Results showing volatility in the number of herring spawning in Puget Sound highlights the importance of long-term monitoring. Several stocks, such as the Port Orchard/Port Madison herring stock in central Puget Sound, have reached record high numbers in recent years, while other stocks, most notably the Cherry Point herring stock in north Puget Sound, have declined to the point of being undetectable.
• Surveyed anchovy. The results show that warmer marine waters appear to have helped increase the number of anchovy in northern Puget Sound during the past decade. Anchovies are a critical forage fish on the Pacific Coast, but little is known about how their change in abundance impacts the Puget Sound food web. The department has begun a pilot study to sample anchovy eggs in Puget Sound to determine their spawning timing and distribution and assess whether these methods may be a practical means of tracking changes in abundance.
• Continued habitat surveys of the distribution and timing of spawning surf smelt, sand lance, and herring.
• The department has begun to use acoustic technology to estimate the extent of submerged aquatic vegetation on herring spawning grounds, which will help refine estimates of the number of spawning herring.
• The department has acquired grants to conduct projects to assess the impacts of birds on herring egg survival and characterize burying habitat for sand lances.

The results of forage fish spawning habitat surveys are updated annually and available online through our interactive map.

Herring spawning biomass is one of the indicators of the Puget Sound Partnership’s Vital Signs for the health of Puget Sound, and annual summaries are available on the vital sign web page.

More details may be found in the progress reports in the resources library.