As a group of Bellingham fourth-graders gathered at the city’s Boulevard Park during lunchtime one sunny day in May, they didn’t yet realize that young salmon were also gathered nearby, just beneath the shimmering surface of Bellingham Bay.
But soon, as Lummi Natural Resources fisheries biologist Donald Kruse and stock assessment manager Devin Flawd coaxed a seine net along the shoreline of a gravel beach, the group caught a glimpse of several silvery fish.
The Lummi staff, along with staff and volunteers from the Whatcom Marine Resources Committee (MRC), the Northwest Straits Foundation and the nonprofit Salish Sea School, distributed the fish in clear plastic tubs so that the students could take a closer look at the catch.
“We want to expose kids to a field activity and show them that there are salmon right along these shorelines,” said Mike MacKay, a former fish biologist for Lummi Nation and a current volunteer for the Whatcom MRC. “Without seining, you might never know there are small salmon right here.”
The Whatcom MRC has organized this annual Beach Seine with Schools program in partnership with local tribes since 2022.
Through the seining conducted on this particular day, students got a close look at 16 chum, 9 chinook and and four coho salmon. The fish were a mix of hatchery and natural-origin juveniles, which spend time along the saltwater shore on their way from the rivers where they were born to the open sea.
Kruse noted some of the key differences between the salmon species as the students observed them; the chum were the smallest of this bunch, the chinook had the most prominent stripes, and the coho had the largest eyes.
In its fourth year, Beach Seine with Schools this spring included tribal speakers Jim Bura, fisheries harvest manager for the Nooksack Indian Tribe; Frank Lawrence III, assistant director of the Lummi Nation natural resources department; and Althea Wilson, who works in the Lummi treaty protection office.
Wilson asked a Beach Seine with Schools group about their favorite foods, which included chicken, tacos and noodles. She then shared that her favorite food is salmon, and her ancestors liked to eat salmon so much that they followed the migration of the fish through the San Juan Islands.
“I come from a people who migrated with the salmon,” Wilson said. “We paddled in canoes and we created what we call a reef net and we would catch a bounty of fish and preserve them. There was a bunch of food here even though there was no McDonald’s.”
Beach Seine with Schools events build off other in-class and field trip lessons done through the Salmon in the Classroom program. Youth learn through that program that salmon are fragile yet resilient, and about the various partners working to restore abundant salmon runs to local streams.
The students also watch salmon grow from eggs into fry in tanks in their classrooms and release the fish into the Whatcom Creek watershed before spring break.
Wilson shared with the group at the park that tribes, as the original stewards of the salmon, are key partners in managing the fish populations today, with the goal of reversing declines of the important Northwest food source.
Above: Volunteers show students the different species of salmon that can be found in Bellingham Bay during the Beach Seine with Schools program in May. Photos and story by Kimberly Cauvel.
