By Chris Winters
Herald Writer
@Chris_At_Herald
Published: Sunday, August 23, 2015, 12:01 a.m.
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MARYSVILLE — A small inflatable boat slipped into Allen Creek near where it empties into Ebey Slough.
The water was warm, brown with mud. The four researchers dropped a beach seine into the channel, dragged it ashore, drained out the water and then began sorting through the morass of weeds and dirt to find every squirming fish. They counted, measured and recorded each one before tossing it back into the water.
What they found wasn't surprising. About 90 percent of the fish they pulled out were various types of sunfish, considered an invasive freshwater species. There were a few native catfish, stickleback, but no salmon were found that day, and none were expected.
The team, employees of the Tulalip Tribes, was led by Casey Rice, a research biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northwest Fisheries Science Center. They were doing one of the final counts before the ecosystem of this 400-acre lowland is changed forever.
At low tide on Friday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers intends to breach a levee separating Ebey Slough from former farmland. When the high tide returns, salt water flowing upstream from Possession Sound will flood the area, returning the land to the salt marsh it had been before the levees were built more than a century ago.
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20150823/NEWS01/150829720Live Stream:
http://video-monitoring.com/timelapse/tulalip/slideshow.htm
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