The 2020 boating season is officially upon us, and as we saw with Mother’s Day weekend, our anchorages will begin to fill with private boats. Our amazing group of islands, where boaters find wonder and relaxation, are also where fish and wildlife find food and shelter. One of the most critical and sensitive marine habitats is eelgrass. This flowering plant grows in shallow, light-filled marine waters. Eelgrass nurtures many species, including crabs and juvenile Chinook salmon and is where Pacific herring lay their eggs.
Pacific herring are small schooling fish that play a big role in marine food webs by supporting salmon, which in turn feed the Southern Resident orcas. In San Juan County, there are just four remaining herring spawning areas: East Sound and West Sound on Orcas Island; Blind Bay on Shaw Island; and the Mud Bay and Hunter Bay region on Lopez Island. Friends of the San Juans is working with boaters and waterfront property owners to help protect and restore eelgrass in these four herring spawning bays.
So we’re reaching out to you for help. If you are a boater, you have an important role to play in protecting marine habitat. Eelgrass damaged by boat anchors can take years to recover. While the impact of each individual anchoring event may be small, the combined effects of thousands of boaters anchoring can be significant. To help salmon and endangered Southern Resident orcas, avoid herring spawning grounds, anchor out in waters deeper than the eelgrass, and if available use a mooring buoy.
Use the map provided in our new green boating guide to avoid impacts to eelgrass and herring. While eelgrass is present in most popular anchorages in the San Juans, in many locations the shallow meadows can be easily avoided by anchoring in waters deeper than 15 feet. If you are not a boater, please help us get the word out by sharing this information with one!
In addition to anchoring out of eelgrass, funding and technical support is available to help interested public and private waterfront property owners improve herring spawning habitat in the San Juans. Please contact Tina, Friends’ Science Director, at [email protected] or 360-298-7616 if you are interested in information on the following voluntary actions: upgrading or relocating outdated mooring buoys to reduce impacts to eelgrass, protecting privately owned tideland habitats with conservation easements, or installing new public buoys to reduce anchoring in herring spawning grounds.
Herring in Eelgrass photo above by Florian Graner.
