Late autumn into winter, a small, shiny, oil-rich fish can be found navigating the Nooksack River. It’s a type of longfin smelt also called hooligan, and historically known as candlefish for its ability to hold a flame.
Standing on the riverbank one November evening, surrounded by the silhouettes of trees and the sparkle of stars beyond, Lummi Nation fisherman Jeff Solomon maneuvered a dip net into the water to try to intercept some hooligans on their migration upriver to spawn.
“I’ve got a few,” said Solomon, who is also a natural resources specialist for the tribe and has been helping to study these fish for about a decade.
He angled his catch to a group of university students huddled nearby in the dark, waiting to document the timing of the catch and the size, sex and spawn readiness of each fish. They also prepared some of the fish for further analysis in a lab.
“We’re trying to answer a couple of biological and ecological questions,” said Delaney Adams, a master’s student in marine science at Western Washington University (WWU). “Any information we can uncover will be exciting.”
Adams is leading the current research, with support from other students of WWU and Northwest Indian College, and in partnership with Solomon and Lummi’s natural resources department. The study aims to gain insight into spawn timing, the ratio of male to female fish, egg abundance per female, and the diet the fish consume on their way upstream.
“Very little is known about the Nooksack River population of hooligans,” said Marco Hatch, associate professor of environmental science at WWU and an advisor of Adams’ project. “It’s not a fish that’s in every river, at least in big numbers, so it’s interesting that way.”
The team spent many frigid evening hours dipping for hooligans and gathering data this past migration season. The work—and tribal harvest—takes place in the dark because hooligans travel upriver during high tides, which peak at night during their migration season.
Beyond that well-established element of hooligan movement, most of what is known about the Nooksack population comes from the long history of tribal harvest, including declines Solomon has reported during his lifetime.
“We’re still here, trying to figure them out,” he said.
Maiyuraq Nanouk Jones, a WWU student, right, measures a hooligan caught from the Nooksack River after sundown in November while her WWU peer Isaac Potter takes notes. Photos and story by Kimberly Cauvel.
