This project is a fish use to understand and document how juvenile salmonids use the nearshore habitats along West Whidbey Island, including ESA listed chinook and possibly Hood Canal summer-run chum. The western shore of Whidbey Island forms half of a bottleneck through which outmigrating smolts from the rivers of Puget Sound and Hood Canal pass to reach the Pacific.

This work included surveys of fish use in nearshore habitats along the western coast of Whidbey Island, in Admiralty Inlet, Washington. Our goal was to identify juvenile-salmonid habitat occupation at potential conservation and restoration sites and to establish a baseline of data regarding juvenile salmonid habitat utilization on the west coast of Whidbey Island. Many salmonid species potentially utilizing nearshore habitats on western Whidbey Island originate from populations experiencing severe declines, including populations listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act (Puget Sound chinook; Hood Canal summer chum). Sampling occurred from February through August in 2005 and 2006 at ten sites representing the range of habitats available along the western coast of Whidbey Island. Additionally, an extensive sampling effort was conducted at sixty sites in May and June of 2006.

This study observed juvenile salmon throughout the entire study period, from February through August in both years. The timing of peak abundance for pink and chum (April-June) and chinook (June-July) was similar to that found in nearshore sites in central Puget Sound. However, peak abundances were later than those observed in studies of nearshore habitats on the east side of Whidbey Island (Beamer et al 2006). Beamer et al. (2006) documented peak abundance of pink and chum salmon from March-May, and chinook from April-June. Hatchery-to-wild proportions in this study were similar to those found by Brennan et al. (2004), with hatchery individuals dominating chinook catches and wild individuals dominating coho catches.