Among salmon of the Skagit River watershed, a rebounding population of Baker River sockeye continues to make a splash.
This run of fish has been affected since the 1920s by hydroelectric dams operated on the Baker River, a major tributary to the Skagit. But in 2008 and 2010, following a 50-year relicensing of the Baker River Hydroelectric Project through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Puget Sound Energy (PSE) instituted an updated fish passage program that takes sockeye on a detour around its Upper Baker and Lower Baker dams and built a hatchery that helps each generation along.
Since then, the number of fish arriving at and departing from the PSE dams each year has grown. A record was set this spring when more than 1.3 million juvenile sockeye were funneled into a floating surface collector on Baker Lake, then were hand counted by PSE staff and driven downstream in fish transport trucks.
The assisted outmigration takes place through May and into early June. The sockeye then make their way down the Skagit River and out to sea.
The portion that survive to adulthood and return to the river system support treaty fishing of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, state sport fishing, and ultimately spawning.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the tribes that co-manage the run expect a strong return of adult sockeye and associated harvests this summer. About 60,000 of the fish are forecast to reach the Skagit River, Baker River and Baker Lake, and they began to trickle in at an adult fish trap and transport facility located below the dams during the first week of June.
The record return of adult sockeye to date was about 65,000 fish in 2023.
The Upper Skagit Indian Tribe insisted on improvements to fish passage and enhanced spawning augmented by hatchery production as part of the hydroelectric project license renewal negotiated in 2004-2007, said Scott Schuyler, the tribe’s natural resources policy representative, and the recent trend is a positive outcome. The improvements were also supported by the Swinomish Tribe and technical staff at the Skagit River System Cooperative.
Still, the sockeye run—and salmon in the Skagit watershed overall—has a lot of room for growth before achieving recovery. The goal of the Baker River Hydroelectric Project agreement is to see returns of 75,000-100,000 spawning adults.
PSE estimates that its sockeye enhancement efforts paired with the lake’s capacity for the production of smolts could accommodate the propagation of about 14.5 million sockeye each year—and its team is working with the state and tribes to continue moving the trend of outmigrating and returning sockeye in the right direction.
Above: Guided by their natural instincts to travel downstream, sockeye follow a flow of water into the floating surface collector at the Upper Baker Dam, where they are counted and then moved into trucks for transport to a release site near where the Baker and Skagit rivers meet. Photos and story by Kimberly Cauvel.
