OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Are the kokanee salmon in Lake Crescent unique?
That’s what biologists with Olympic National Park and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe hope to determine through a genetic study of the fish.
The genetic analysis will determine if Lake Crescent kokanee are the progeny of hatchery fish released into the lake between 1914 and 1939 or a unique native population that adapted to the lake after a landslide separated Lake Crescent from Lake Sutherland and the Elwha watershed several thousand years ago.
The study began last week with park and tribal biologists collecting tissue samples of 60 kokanee, said Dave Reynolds, park spokesman.
Kokanee, the resident or land-locked form of sockeye salmon, are the primary food source for Beardslee and Crescenti trout, both of which are endemic populations occurring only in Lake Crescent.
“Despite the importance of kokanee to the lake’s food chain dynamics, little is known about this population’s status, life history and genetic origin,” the park said in a statement.
Using nonlethal capture and sampling methods, biologists remove a small portion of the caudal fin of the kokanee, and then release the fish back into the lake.
The genetic analysis will be done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries.
Results generally take several months, Reynolds said.
The work is the final phase of a three-year investigation, which began in 2009, into the kokanee salmon population in the lake, Reynolds said.
The park received $50,000 from the National Park Service for the three-year study.
Crater Lake National Park donated hydroacoustic gear — which uses sound in water to study fish — and both the park and the tribe are donating fisheries biologists staff time.
In hydroacoustic studies, park and tribal biologists are determining distribution, population size and spawning locations of kokanee in the lake.
Biologists don’t have a population estimate yet, Reynolds said, but they have determined that the south shore of the lake is a primary spawning area, identifying redds in shallow water between Fairholme and La Poel.
