Ohop Valley Fish-Out

Day 329: Years ago, meandering Ohop Creek was ditched and straightened by farmers who wanted to drain the natural wetland and turn it into a cow pasture. As it turned out, the soil was too clayey to perk well, and flooded seasonally with the heavy winter rains. In recent years, the Nisqually Land Trust has worked to have the natural meander restored, and today saw the completion of another section. Dozens of volunteers from several different organizations gathered together to help with a "fish-out," i.e., removal of fish, crustaceans, shellfish and amphibians from the blocked-off straight section of the creek and relocation to the new meander. They were captured by seine and hand-net, lifted out by the bucketload, transported to a station where they were categorized, weighed and measured, and then were placed in a holding tank to await the final opening of the last blockades at the top of the new creek channel. Then they would be released into their new habitat where hopefully they will prosper.

I was a member of a seining crew, and for the most part, our pulls yielded up sculpins of several varieties, Coho salmon fry, dace, cutthroat trout and an abundance of crayfish from tiny to some of the largest I've ever seen. We found a few freshwater mussels in our section, and another section yielded at least a hundred. After one or two passes with the seine, the water became so cloudy that we couldn't tell how deep it was, and anyone who had come hoping not to go in above the tops of their gumboots soon learned that that was an impossible dream. Some wore waders. Others (including me) only donned boots as protection against rocks and submerged branches, and waded out hip-deep in whatever we happened to be wearing. Some passes with the nets turned up nothing; others brought a dozen or more critters to the buckets. The largest fish rescued from our seine was a sculpin approximately six inches in length. Several of the crawdads rivalled it for size.

In all, it was a very relaxed and rewarding day, and I am looking forward to the time when the Land Trust holds a planting here to repair the scarification done by the heavy equipment in the course of creating the new meander. It takes time to put things to rights, and I may not last to see it, but I have confidence that Ohop Valley will once again provide habitat for native species.