A partnership between the Squaxin Island Tribe and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has allowed one of the tribe’s first foods to begin to flourish.
The tribe and environmental nonprofit teamed up three years ago to revive Olympia oysters, which have long been prized by the tribe and others but have been imperiled by pollution, over-harvesting and other threats.
“We’ve had success and want to build on that,” said Eric Sparkman, the tribe’s shellfish manager.
Olympia oysters are the only oyster species native to the West Coast. Relatively small in size, they are valued both as food and as a part of the ecosystems they live in—filtering water and creating beds that serve as habitat for other species, including salmon.
Over the years, a number of threats have diminished the oysters’ population, including effluent and predators such as the Japanese oyster drill, an invasive sea snail that eats Olympia oysters along with other prey.
The partnership aims to bolster the oyster population on Squaxin Island, which is spiritually sacred to the Squaxin Island Tribe as a place of healing. Previously the location of the tribe’s reservation after the signing of the Treaty of Medicine Creek in 1854, the island is now used exclusively by tribal members for fishing, hunting and shellfish gathering. Tribal members also harvest plants on the island and hold cultural ceremonies there.
With support from The Nature Conservancy, tribal staff laid down cultch—a substrate of oyster shells—and oyster seed that will settle and grow on the cultch.
“I’d say what we see is we’ve got a lot of oysters on shell,” Sparkman said. “There’s mortality, but there’s a good amount of oysters there. To have a large number of oysters in that vicinity is the goal—to have a spawning, dense, population of oysters.”
The tribe is exploring three more sites to potentially repeat the effort, aided by a grant through Natural Resources Conservation Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Puget Sound Restoration Fund (PSRF) provided the seed for the project with TNC. In addition, since 2015, the tribe and PSRF have been monitoring Olympia oyster recruitment by placing sticks laced with oyster shells to catch oyster spat. The tribe later pulls them to send to PSRF, which provides the tribe with data on how the posts have worked to recruit young oysters. —Trevor Pyle
Squaxin Island shellfish manager Eric Sparkman (right) and The Nature Conservancy Marine Conservation manager Molly Bogeberg examine oysters in the spring as part of the tribe and nonprofit’s ongoing partnership to improve the population of Olympia oysters.