Deception Pass

This post is the final of 3 about my trip in early July to the Olympic Peninsula and Whidbey Island.

Heading out of Bowman Bay in Deception Pass State Park.

Luckily our trip to Washington coincided with some decent morning low tides. Since we had a new kayak with us, it was a great chance to do some “tidepooling" – not from land, but from the ocean's point of view. I launched the kayak at Bowman Bay in Deception Pass Stake Park and paddled on the north side of the bay towards Rosario Head. It was the same route that I took with my wife and oldest son a few years ago when we paid for a local kayaking tour. 


Map of Bowman Bay and Roasario Head. The red asterisk
marks the approximate location of the Cymathere population I found.





I explored the bull kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) forests and a few of the rocky outcrops and islets that are so common in Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands. The exposed intertidal rocks were covered in large barnacles, and patches of cabbage kelp (Saccharina sessilis) and other seaweeds. I even saw a sea otter saunter down the from the exposed rocks of the intertidal and slip into the water. I've had no idea that otters made excursions onto land, but perhaps this animal was in search of tasty bivalves.

An otter notwithstanding, my scientific inclinations usually cause me to pay most attention to the plants. There was one particularly exciting find along a section of rugged coastline north of Rosario Head: a small population of several individuals of the kelp Cymathere triplicata. These long strapped shaped kelps were growing in shallow subtidal water right near the short surf zone. I hovered in place for some time trying to get some pictures of the Cymathere blades swirling hear the surface of the water.

Cymathere triplicata.

Cymathere is somewhat of a novelty for me because it does not occur in California or Oregon. It is distributed from Washington to Alaska (Druehl 2000). It is a relatively easy kelp to identify because of the presence of three ribs that run longitudinally down the thick blades. The north Pacific is the center of kelp diversity in the world, and this species is a special Washington treat.

The day had a little adrenaline too. At one point while observing the Cymathere specimens, I got a little too close to the surf zone and started to get pushed into rocks. Later in the day I took the kayak out a second time out of Bowman Bay and proceeded south into Deception Pass. The large wakes from the boats were a concern, but an even larger problem was that I began to be swept into the strong tidal currents that move tremendous volumes of water into the Pass and south towards Seattle. I realized what was occurring pretty quickly and turned around to make my way out of the pass, but found that I was essentially making no ground whatsoever despite paddling with all of my effort. I figured that the currents would be weaker closer to shore and found that I was able to make some progress on my return closer to the rocky shoreline. I wasn't in any particular danger, but if I had not been successful in turning around, I would have had to land at a beach somewhere else in the park and created a lot of work for myself to get the kayak back to the car.

The Washington Islands are a magical place and I have had the fortune to explore, kayak, collect seaweeds and conduct intertidal research among them.

References

Druehl, L.D. 2000. Pacific Seaweeds. Harbour Publishing, British Columbia.


Bull kelp forest in Bowman Bay.



  

The Elwha

This post continues the narrative of my trip in early July to the Olympic Peninsula and Whidbey Island.

Our second night on the Olympic peninsula we camped at Sol Duc inside the national park. The following day we had adventures at a few other places in the park: a short hike to Sol Duc falls, kayaking on Lake Crescent, and a drive along part of the Elwha River.



The Elwha River with a heavy sediment load.

Sol Duc falls.

The Elwha is notable because it is currently undergoing large-scale watershed restoration with the removal of two dams. Most of the dam removal has already occurred at this point in time, and the dramatic changes to the watershed are evidenced by the milky grey water that is churning down the valley. Apparently this project is the largest dam removal in the United States (1). Restoration of the watershed is expected to increase populations of salmonids (which were highly impacted by dam construction and loss of habitat (1,2). As the restoration of the watershed proceeds, some interesting things to look for include  the evolution of water clarity as sediment works its way towards the ocean, whether that sediment will quickly create new estuarine marsh habitat at the Elwha delta and whether salmon runs will recover to pre-dam conditions.


The National Park Service hosts a blog and photogallery of dam removal.

References:
1. http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/upload/Elwha-River-Restoration-Brochure-2013_Final.pdf
2. http://www.americanrivers.org/initiatives/dams/projects/elwha-river-background.html

Tiger lilies (Lilium columbianum) along the Sol Duc River.

Mt. Skokomish wilderness

The Hamma Hama River with the Mt. Skokomish
wilderness in the distance.

After a few years living in the Pacific Northwest, I finally made it up to the Olympic peninsula in Washington state for a short vacation with the family earlier this month. Olympic National Park is the main attraction on the peninsula, but there are several wilderness areas immediately adjacent to the park. We had several days of outdoor adventures in Washington that I will highlight in the next couple of posts.

Our first night on the peninsula we camped at the Hamma Hamma campsite in the Olympic National Forest on the SE side of the mountain range. The Hamma Hamma River tumbles out of Mt. Skokomish wilderness to flow into Hood Canal. I woke up about 5:30 AM to the sound of all sorts of singing birds competing with the sound of water rushing down the river. After breakfast and packing up camp, we continued up the valley to the end of the road at the Mildred Lakes trailhead. We hiked several miles into the wilderness on a steep trail that was only poorly marked in several sections. Most of the trail navigated through dense coniferous forest. Because the kids were with me and we had no real navigation guides, we turned back when following the trail became pretty difficult. Unfortunately, I think the point at which we turned back was only a short distance from the intended destination so we missed the lakes this time around.

Adiantum aleuticum.

Along the trail, there were all sorts of coastal temperate forest species present, virtually all of them familiar to me from my explorations in Oregon. Trees included douglas fir, western hemlock, cedars, vine maples and alder. Other plant species I recognized included:
- sword fern (Polystichum) and bracken fern (Pteridium)
- deer fern (Blechnum spicant)
- five finger fern (Adiantum aleuticum)
- wild ginger (Asarum caudatum)
- thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus)
- salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis)
- red columbine (Aquilegia formosa)
- cow’s parsnip (Heracleum maximum)
- false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum)
- salal (Gaultheria shallon)
- Castilleja, Trillium, and Clintonia uniflora
- bunchberry (Cornus unalaschkensis)



Wild ginger (Asarum caudatum). Note the single purple flower
below the leaves. The flowers aren't always very obvious
from a hiker's vantage point, so be sure to look under the leaves!

One of the most ecologically-interesting phenomena I encountered was a huge clearing in the forest that appeared after perhaps a mile and a half into the trail. The clearing was several hundred meters in width and ran down the hillside, with an abrupt border of erect conifers. Clearly, this disturbance was a historic avalanche of some sort, perhaps caused by snow or a rock slide. The clearing was full of old woody debris from trees that were victims to the incident and vegetated by shrubby and herbaceous plants such as Heracleum maximum and small trees. Given the degree of re-vegetation at the time of my visit, I guess that the landslide could have occurred some 5-15 years ago.



Avalanche site, with intact coniferous forest to the left.

The role of sudden large-scale disturbances on ecosystem structure is a fascinating topic in ecology. Examples of these types of disturbances include hurricanes in coral reef ecosystems and avalanches or volcanic eruptions in montane forests. Their temporal nature is fascinating – the exact timing and location of these impacts are unpredictable, but the fact that they are bound to happen sooner or later is rather predictable. Large-scale, low frequency disturbances introduce an interesting historic component to why any particular ecosystem is structured the way it is at any given point in time. Once such a disturbance occurs, it resets the successional clock in an ecosystem. An avalanche in a forest may wipe out dominant late-successional tree species and thereby initiate a sequence of colonization that starts with pioneering species that successfully colonize the disturbed habitat.

Such disturbances are also difficult to study in real-time, because they occur on ecological time scales that are long relative to our own lifetimes. In the Pacific Northwest, for example, volcanic eruptions or massive subduction earthquakes may occur only once every few decades or centuries, but they have dramatic impacts on ecosystems. How cool it would be to have something like a time-lapse movie to view hundreds of years of ecological history at any given place!