What's the Otter up to?

“What are you doing out here?”

“We’re looking for surf smelt eggs, they’re a type of forage fish that salmon eat. They lay their eggs in intertidal zones, and the eggs stick to beach material like sand. ”

Have you found any salmon? How are the salmon?

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“…. We’re looking for surf smelt eggs. They are a kind of fish that salmon eat while growing in estuaries…

Thus I imagine the Otter’s interactions with the public (quite possibly because that’s how he describes them to me, in quiet exasperation).  You see, he is on a crew that spends the vast majority of its time looking for surf smelt eggs. Which are clear, and about the size of a pinhead. 

Those crazy biologists and their fish!

If that’s what you are thinking, it’s a sadly common attitude. I however chose to believe that you (especially because so very many of you are much more in tune with the natural world than a random sampling of Americans) are wondering why forage fish are so important, and why I am rantrambling about them.

Because of where my life has taken me, we will first and foremost look at these creatures through a salmon-centric lens (Surprise! Not.) And to do that we need a quick life cycle recap.

It goes like this: salmon are placed in a gravel nest by their poor mothers (I have yet to encounter an animal mother I pity more than a female salmon, we can have a contest about that later) in egg stage. They incubate and develop, the rate of which depends on many factors especially water temperature. They hatch, become alevin, finish up their yummy yolk sac, and emerge from the gravel as fry. Depending on the species, they will spend about zero months to 2 years in the fry stage eating insects and zooplankton. And here is where the cycle becomes relevant to forage fish: when salmon are in the smolt stage, they live in estuaries, eating, growing bigger, adjusting to saltwater, and trying to avoid becoming prey to the multitudinous hordes of organisms that feast on them. As you can imagine the faster they can grow, the very much better they will be at avoiding predators or perhaps escaping if they should encounter the voracious snapping beak of a duck or heron. And thus, forage fish are important.

Did I say important? I meant to say forage fish are CRITICAL.  Forage fish is a rather large lumping of animals called the “fuel of the marine food web.” And the Otter happens to focus on surf smelt (on this diagram they count as “small fish”).

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Now let’s take off our salmon lenses, and look at the rest of the ecosystem. As we know from my previous endeavor to spread the salmon word, salmon are a keystone species in a complex intertwined ecosystem. While too abundant to be considered keystone species (the definition of a keystone species being that the species in question has an enormous impact on the ecosystem disproportionate to their relative – read: low – number) forage fish are tied to every carnivorous/omnivorous critter roaming the shores. Including humans, who have fished for herring and smelt rather a lot.

And honestly, before Brandon took this position I knew very little about any kind of forage fish. I knew a little about herring, which lay their eggs on eelgrass or kelp, and whose eggs were harvested by local tribes who put conifer branches in eelgrass beds, tricking the fish into laying eggs on the branches. 

So if I, a world renowned (sometimes it’s fun to exaggerate) know-it-all knew nothing, what are the odds that the non-scientifically inclined population has even an inkling how precious these little fish are? Low, odds are low. So it is another topic for community education - tada! And a reminder to me that there is a seemingly infinite quantity of knowledge out there to consume.

One of the things that is interesting about the Otter's work is that so few people understand exactly what he is doing, and why. It took me a while to figure it out, even working in a field directly effected by the plight of forage fish. I say plight because... like salmon they have increasingly lost suitable spawning habitat in the Sound. The developments that impact them are things like seawalls, shoreline armoring, bulkheads, over-water structures like docks, piers... which over time can starve the beach of sandy substrate necessary for fish spawning like smelt and sand lance, and shade out vegetation like eelgrass used by herring. This is without considering the pollution that is currently running into the Sound from stormwater drains... (I may have posted that before, but its worth sharing again) Take into account also that scientists are still figuring these fish out. They historically were incredibly abundant, so not a whole lot of time was invested in researching these small but might species. And so now it seems like scrambling at the edge of a precipice, trying to figure out how to find stability before the ground gives way beneath your feet. That's my take at least. 

If you are curious and have time to spare, you can find some more information here, and here, and probably lots of other places if you look.

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It is a fair assessment that Brandon’s job is at times way more exciting than mine. He gets stung by jellyfish, sees orcas, otters, foxes, all kinds of bizarre sea-life including nudibranchs (sea slugs, much more interesting looking than the majority of their terrestrial kin), strains his eyes looking for eggs that look approximately like tiny bits of quartz, was once rewarded by finding hatched out smelt in his petri dish, travels to lend a hand on other projects… If I sound jealous, it’s because I am a little bit. But I console myself on rainy days, because I am not the one out on a tiny boat, or sieving endless samples, or eyes pressed against a microscope… It is a balance. As I say to students I present to, thank you for learning today!

Now if you'll kindly excuse me, I have some salmon puppets to mend. And I'm not joking. Tootles!