Snorkeler counts Chinook salmon in Lake Washington at night — here’s why

Climate Lab is a Seattle Times initiative that explores the effects of climate change in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The project is funded in part by The Bullitt Foundation, CO2 Foundation, Jim and Birte Falconer, Mike and Becky Hughes, Henry M. Jackson Foundation, University of Washington and Walker Family Foundation, and its fiscal sponsor is the Seattle Foundation.

Wearing a bright orange and gray dry suit, Ashley Townes stepped into the murky water of Lake Washington under a yellow moon.

It was a cool April evening as Townes put on a thermal hoodie, goggles and a snorkel and faced the piercing white lights of Boeing’s Renton factory across the water. Nearby mallards rested. Townes sunk into the water with a GoPro attached to a light, her dry suit becoming an orange blob beneath the surface.

It was around bedtime for most, but for Townes, swimming at night here is part of her work as a fish biologist and a member of a grassroots group of neighbors who have advocated and fundraised for years to restore Be’er Sheva Park.

Since 2017, $2.5 million has been dedicated toward upgrading its 25½ acres — named after Be’er Sheva, Israel, one of Seattle’s sister cities — and improving access to Lake Washington.

The grassroots group — using the slogan “Where’s the beach?” — has pointed out that while waterfront parks elsewhere in the city tend to be larger, better maintained and with amenities, Be’er Sheva Park, which serves a predominantly Black and diverse neighborhood, has not gotten the same treatment.

Last year, the Rainier Beach neighborhood celebrated the end of its first phase of renovations, which included an upgraded waterfront, covered gathering spaces, lighted walking paths, barbecues and picnic tables, and a cultural performance stage (which was then damaged by November’s bomb cyclone).

Townes’ work is part of the next phase of renovations, totaling around $500,000, which includes restoring the shoreline and salmon habitat.

This is the third year that Townes, a University of Washington doctorate student, has visited the beach at least twice a month between January and early June, during Chinook migration season, to count how many baby salmon are using the shoreline habitat and the 400-feet stretch of Mapes Creek. The park has been a known resting spot for the Cedar River salmon, where they eat bugs in the 5-foot-deep water and hide from predators, Townes said.

The fish are most active, and visible, at night. This has led to Townes being called “the fish lady” or “MacDiver” by the neighbors who hang out in the parking lot nearby listening to music at night. Luckily, Townes lives a short distance away.

Her research is intended to document whether juvenile Chinook salmon are using the habitat, which was only restored last year before this year’s migratory season.

In November, a barge traveled to the South Seattle park and lowered six 40-foot logs into the water, which were anchored to the lake bottom. Workers also added gravel that is better for baby salmon to avoid predators and installed an underwater “plant mound” that will be used to try to reestablish a native plant.

While some of the salmon counting is done manually in the water with a GoPro, Townes also uses a lime green remote-controlled submersible with a long tether attached to a video game joystick. In 2021 and 2022, Townes had surveyed the site before the area was restored.

In April, Townes counted seven juvenile Chinook and some bottom-dwelling sculpin hanging around the logs, and then 16 juvenile Chinook in Mapes Creek, each gray fish only a few centimeters long with black parr marks down its side.

Townes says she has noticed more salmon in both the restored habitat and the creek since the habitat was restored. Her monitoring work will be completed after a second year of post-construction monitoring in 2026.

“The Duwamish Tribe lived here (hundreds) of years ago and we can’t go back to that beautiful natural state that it was back then, but we can get close to several hundred years ago,” she said.

The park has other improvements planned, like installing fitness equipment and upgrading the play area. As for the salmon habitat, this fall, Townes and other ecologists will try again to establish the duck potato, a marshy tuber that has historically grown in the area, on a mound of dirt built in the water.

“Last year they planted the duck potato, and we had protection fencing over the top of it, but the Canada geese ripped through the protection fencing and ate every single duck potato,” said Jim Keller, a managing principal with landscape architecture firm SiteWorkshop.

The duck potato and bulrush are native to Western Washington lakes, though its presence largely disappeared as Lake’s Washington’s marshy edges gave way to bulkheads and after the level of the lake was dropped by the Ballard Locks, said Lizzie Zemke, a restoration ecologist who worked on the Be’er Sheva project before retiring recently. The plant is also culturally significant to tribes as a food source, she said.

The issue with trying to reintroduce a marsh plant in Lake Washington is that the water level of the lake is opposite to what the plant expects during its growing cycles, Zemke said. During the winter, the water level in the lake is kept artificially low and then artificially high during the summer, she said.

The potential solution that environmental engineers came up with was to install a “plant mound” in the water, which Zemke hopes will allow the plants to get a head start on the growing season.