PORT ANGELES — A quarter-century from now, the Elwha River will be teeming with salmon, including the legendary 100-pound chinook, scientists predict.
“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t see 100-pounders again,” Elwha River Restoration Project Manager Brian Winter said Tuesday.
It won’t take 25 years, however, for 10 different runs of anadromous salmon and trout that once thrived in the pristine river and its tributaries upstream from the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams to benefit from their removal.
“We’ll start seeing fish pass the dams the very first year,” Winter said.
The National Park Service, which is leading the $325 million effort to restore the Elwha River to its wild state, predicts full restoration of chinook, coho, pink, chum, steelhead and sockeye salmon to occur in 12 to 25 years.
Full restoration means the condition of the runs before the first dam built, the Elwha Dam, was constructed without fish passage five miles from the Strait of Juan de Fuca in 1913.
The Park Service estimates that 400,000 salmon will swim up the river annually by 2036, compared with the 3,000 in the river now.
Time line
Here’s a time line for the salmon species’ recovery from an environmental impact statement:
■ Chinook (king) — 21 to 25 years to recovery.
Full restoration is considered 31,000 fish, compared with 1,500 to 2,000 in the river now. Includes spring and summer-fall runs.
■ Coho (silver) — 15 to 18 years to recovery.
Full restoration is considered 35,000 fish, compared with fewer than 500 in the river now.
■ Pink — 16 to 20 years to recovery. Full restoration is considered 274,000 fish, compared with no wild pinks in the river now.
■ Chum — 18 to 21 years to recovery. Full restoration is considered 36,000 fish, compared with fewer than 200 in the river now.
■ Sockeye — 12 to 20 years to recovery.
Full restoration is considered 6,500 fish, compared with none in the river now.
■ Steelhead (not a salmon but a sea-going rainbow trout) — 15 to 18 years to recovery.
Full restoration is considered 10,000 fish, compared with fewer than 500 in the river now (includes summer and winter runs).
Projections for cutthroat trout and native char, both of which are expected to benefit from the dams removal, were not available.
The water above the dams is populated by resident bull trout and trout.
Anadromous fish — salmon and steelhead — migrate from salt water to spawn in fresh water.
These fish can’t get past the soon-to-be-removed dams to get to the 70 miles of spawning habitat upstream because both dams — the second dam, Glines Canyon, went up in 1927 — were built without fish ladders.
First chinook
The first 10 adult chinook salmon were introduced into Lake Mills behind Glines Canyon Dam on Wednesday, the Elwha River restoration project director for the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe said Thursday.
“Hopefully, they’ll go upstream and spawn,” Robert Elofson said.
When the salmon return downstream to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, they will be carried by water over the tops of the dams as the lakes behind the dams are drained, he said.
“They don’t have to go through the [dam] turbines anymore,” Elofson said.
“That was a major, harmful part of the trip going downstream, was going through those turbines.”
Salmon recovery
Three facilities were built on the river or near the river to aid in salmon recovery, Winter said.
Chief among them is the $16.4 million Lower Elwha Klallam tribal fish hatchery, which opened in May and which was named in a Wednesday ceremony with a Klallam name that translates to “House of Salmon.”
Elofson, who is also the tribe’s natural resources director, said the hatchery is needed to protect the fish from the estimated 10.5 million cubic yards of sediment that will be released when the dams are removed.
“It’s possible that the sediment load could reach lethal levels,” Elofson said in a separate interview.
“That’s why the hatchery and rearing channel are going to be used.”
The tribal fish hatchery will raise endangered steelhead, as well as coho, pink and chum salmon.
A second facility — the state Department of Fish & Wildlife-operated fish-rearing channel in the Elwha River — will continue to produce Elwha chinook.
These chinook carry the same genetics as their supersized ancestors that stayed in the ocean for seven or eight years before spawning in the Elwha and its tributaries, Winter said.
Dam removal will allow the salmon to go through a natural selection process of making the difficult climb upstream in the main stem of the river and its 30 miles of tributaries.
Another reason dam removal will help salmon recovery is water temperature.
Winter has said the river will be 2 to 4 degrees cooler without the dams because the sun won’t have a chance to heat standing water in the reservoirs.
A third facility was built to help Elwha salmon: the $2.1 million fish-rearing facility on Morse Creek just off U.S. Highway 101 east of downtown Port Angeles.
The Morse Creek pens will raise some Elwha salmon to preserve their genetic makeup in case an extinction does occur in the river.
Elofson said he is hopeful that the legendary 100-pound chinook salmon will return.
He said there are 60- to 70-pound fish in the lower river already.
Scientist from around the world will be watching the Elwha River to see what happens next.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
Reporter Paul Gottlieb contributed to this report.
