ELWHA RIVER — Matt Beirne reached through the swirling sheen and scooped up the dead young fish. Some had settled into the sediment, others floated belly-up or with mouths gaped.
He laid the fish on rocks along the shore. Juvenile steelhead and rainbow trout, lamprey, coho, Chinook, bull trout and sculpin were neatly wrapped in aluminum foil caskets, bagged up and put on ice.
The smell of gasoline wafted through the air.
It was less than 24 hours after a fuel tanker truck careened off Highway 101 on Friday, flipping over and spilling some 3,000 gallons of gas and diesel into Indian Creek, an Elwha tributary.
The tanker truck was hauled out and cleanup crews are beginning to remove contaminated soils. The supply of drinking water from the Elwha for the city of Port Angeles was briefly interrupted before it was found to be safe. But the impact on fish and other wildlife in this recovering salmon habitat is still being assessed.
Early estimates suggest the fish kill is in the thousands.
Beirne, the natural resources director for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, and other scientists worked over the weekend to survey the damage.
“It was a really hard, emotionally draining day,” Beirne said, as he recounted the losses. “It was everything from the macroinvertebrates on which the juveniles feed all the way up the chain.”
Millions of dollars and decades of work have been invested on the Elwha watershed to recover fish habitat, making the spill especially devastating. The last dam on the Elwha was removed over a decade ago in a project that cost $325 million. Indian Creek is possibly the Elwha’s most productive and diverse tributary for salmon and other species. And it’s home to one of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s inland village sites, tiʔtiʔə́ɬ.
In 2023, the state removed a fish-blocking culvert in the creek, building a bridge for $16.4 million.
That’s where the tanker left the roadway.
Recovery just beginning
Indian Creek was among the first places fish found after the removal of Elwha Dam in 2012.
The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, for about a decade, took surplus hatchery coho and moved them into Indian Creek and other tributaries to spawn upstream. It was wildly successful, and their progeny began a natural life in the creek.
Some 5,000 to 35,000 young coho leave Indian Creek for the saltwater each year — more than some entire watersheds in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
“And we’re only a decade into a multidecade recovery process,” Beirne said.
The tribe held the first ceremonial and subsistence fishery on a free-flowing river in more than a century in 2023.
After generations of degradation, humans have been nurturing the river’s recovery.
“It’s heartbreaking because these rivers are our relatives. We see them as living beings, not just as a water source,” said Vanessa Castle, a member of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. “The fish are our relatives. It’s more than just water and fish. It’s a part of our spirituality. It’s a part of our sustenance. It’s our church. This affects everything about who we are as people.”
Tracking the damage
Mike McHenry, a biologist with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, ticked through his tally for the day:
- Mykiss: 308.
- Lamprey: 185.
- Coho: 107.
- Sculpin: 41.
- Crawfish: 24.
- Chinook: 3.
A full accounting of the fish McHenry and other teams of scientists recovered isn’t complete, but it’s estimated to be in the thousands. Fish samples will be sent to a lab to determine the cause of death and if it’s consistent with exposure to a fuel spill.
It’s likely a significant undercount as many impacted fish could have been scavenged by birds in the area or flushed downstream, scientists say. Crews also couldn’t reach the spill site early because of risks of chemical exposure.
Left, Dead crawfish and a stonefly are counted near Indian Creek. Right, Dead prickly sculpin. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
Left, Dead crawfish and a stonefly are counted near Indian Creek. Right, Dead… (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
The tribe monitors out-migrating juvenile salmon from the river, and McHenry said he would almost guarantee they will pick up a signal from this fish kill. They have more than 10 years of survey data on the abundance of juvenile fish in the creek and will be reviewing it to tease out the impact of the spill.
At this point, the tribe is interested in understanding the levels of contamination in the creek.
Adult pink and Chinook salmon are set to return to the creek in the next few weeks. The tribe and state are considering blocking their access to prevent spawning in potentially contaminated gravels in Indian Creek.
“To have something like this happen in the heart of it — the most heavily utilized spawning areas, also in Indian Creek, is a real blow,” McHenry said. “Is it a forever blow? No. It represents lost future productivity.”
Future impacts
Other spills in the Pacific Northwest can offer examples of what can happen when fossil fuels enter salmon habitat.
In March 1999, a tanker truck jackknifed and spilled more than 5,000 gallons of gasoline on the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation. Most of the fuel flowed into Beaver Butte Creek, just above its confluence with Beaver Creek, a tributary to the Warm Springs River.
Thousands of fish were killed, including Chinook and steelhead. Juvenile Chinook and steelhead that survived the initial spill suffered reduced growth and survival after their food — largely bugs — was lost.
There’s typically a two-phase response in fish.
There’s the immediate fish kill — likely due to gill inflammation and loss of respiratory function, said Nat Scholz, an ecotoxicologist recently retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. The spill may also lead to losses in the base of the food web, degrading prey availability.
For Indian Creek and the Elwha, the question now is how the effects of the spilled gasoline and diesel will play out in the long term.
This is happening in an area that is relatively pristine, so it could be easy to detect lingering damage.
Later this month, canoes from Native nations across the Salish Sea will land in Elwha as part of an annual journey.
“This is going to be a healing process for us and all of them,” Lower Elwha Klallam Chairwoman Frances Charles said. “We need those prayers and that healing to help us with this river again. They were successful in standing with us and they’re going to do it again. We’re going to do it again.”
