Watershed Council

The Bainbridge Island Watershed Council works on projects and actions that protect and improve the condition of the island's watersheds, shorelines, and related wildlife habitats through volunteer stewardship, educational outreach, and advising the city government on key issues.

PLEASE NOTE: when the watershed council moved their page to this website, an individual or group took the webpage name we used to use, biwatershedcouncil. That website is NOT our website any more. We do not know who this group is, but if you do, please let us know, because that person has not responded to our request to make it clear that they are not the same entity.

WHAT WE ARE UP TO THIS SUMMER

The Murden Creek watershed sign is on its summer travels!

The Murden Creek watershed sign was created as a joint project of the Watershed Council, Sakai Intermediate School, and the City of Bainbridge Island with assistance from local graphic designer Joe Tschida and Smallwood Construction. The sign is an 8 ft x 4ft free standing display that depicts the Murden Creek Watershed and has opening doors all around the edge that allow the reader to learn more about the resources and stewardship of the watershed. During the school year, the sign resides at Sakai where it is used as a teaching tool. In the summer months, the sign travels around the watershed, and we choose a new place each year within the watershed to put the sign, so that the community can engage and learn from it. This year our thanks to the Bainbridge Island Metroplitan Parks and Recreation District for letting us display the sign in the south entrance to the east Grand Forest, just off Mandus Olsen Rd. Go check out the sign, which will be there through August!

Bainbridge Island Salmon Monitoring Program

The Bainbridge Island Watershed Council has completed their 13th annual spawning salmon monitoring season this year. This program monitors four streams on Bainbridge Island – Cooper Creek at the head of Eagle Harbor; two segments of Springbrook Creek; Manzanita Creek; and Murden Creek- for returning adult spawning and juvenile salmon. Volunteers conduct fish and redd (the nests in which salmon lay their eggs) surveys weekly for a two-month period each fall.

The vast majority of the returning adult salmon in the data below are coho. Cooper Creek is the exception as it is a primarily chum salmon-bearing stream as a result of supplementation work the Watershed Council did in partnership with the Suquamish Tribe from 2009 to 2012 to restore salmon to this stream from . This year we had our first sighting of a Chinook salmon in Manzanita Creek, which is likely a stray from the Grover's Creek terminal fish hatchery in Indianola. High returns of adults were seen in Springbrook and Manzanita this year, with very low returns on Murden Creek, and on Cooper. As Suquamish Coho net pens are currently active in Rich Passage, these higher returns on our west side streams may reflect some straying of salmon returning to the net pen area and entering our streams.

Redds were only observed in Springbrook Creek this year, where more than a dozen were observed. Our Springbrook monitoring reach is consistently where we have seen the most redd activity over time (see Figure below). We did not observe redds in our other stream reaches this year. This finding is not surprising for lower Manzanita Creek, as we are observing returning adults close to the mouth of this stream, and spawning is likely occurring further upstream. As both Cooper and Murden Creeks had very low numbers of adult salmon sited in these reaches, the lack of redds observed is unsurprising and fairly consistent with past years of few or no redds observed, though disappointing for us as we always hope to see signs of the next generation in our monitoring!

MINUTES AND AGENDAS

Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, September 13, 7 - 8:30pm at the Marge Williams Center. Hope to see you there!

 January 2018 BIWC Minutes

 May 2018 BIWC Minutes