Here at North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center the Natural Resources One Crew served as Stream-keepers for two local creeks known as Tumwater and Valley. Streamkeepers of Clallam County’s job is to monitor the health and the habitat of streams in Clallam County.

In the picture we have two students (Hailey Whit-ney, left and Daniel Ersland, far right) working with Natural Resources teacher Dan Lieberman to measure the flow in Tumwater Creek.

The students have spent the fall season working with and learning from local Streamkeepers on projects including monitoring fish and collecting data for Washington State and the Elwha Tribe.

Streamkeepers of Clallam County is being cut along with many other jobs in Clallam County as part of a $2+ million dollar budget cut. If you have questions about the future of Streamkeep-ers, please call Clallam County Commissioners at 360-417-2233 or Clallam County’s Director of Community Development at 360-417-2321.

A student’s way of understanding the earth

Sk i l l s Cente r Natu ra l Re sour ce s www.nops c . o rg / natu ra l r e sour ce s

Keeping the Streams . . . and Streamkeepers? By Andrew Colvin

Natural Resources 1 Class monitoring Tumwater Creek

Elwha Science Symposium

By Kayla McLaughlin

gxÜÜtVÉzÇ|àt Welcome to

Terra Cognita, a student-written,

environmentally-focused

news report on events

within Skills Center

Natural Resources Pro-gram, the Olympic Pen-

insula, and the globe.

Local News: Elwha Science Symposium

1

Photo Flash: Keeping the Stream(keepers)

1

Report from the Field: Elwha Reveg

2

Photos from the Field: NR 1 Class

2

Opinion: Our Friend the Salmon

3

Global Issue Opinion: Pollution

3

Events: Community NR SCP Presentations

4

Class Preview: Natu-ral Resources SCPs

4

Local News: Jellyfish Influx in PA Harbor

4

In This Issue:

Fall 2011 Volume 2, Issue 1

Natural Resources 1 Crew at Tumwater Creek river mi. 4.4

Photo Flash

of the Quarter

A college is a well-known place of learning, but recently a different event was housed at our very own Peninsula College (PC). I was one of the Port Angeles High School students lucky enough to attend this event, the Elwha River Restoration Science Symposium September 15-16, 2011.

The first day of the symposium offered a series of sessions. I went to all the biology sessions, but there were also geology and history sessions. Most of the focus during the biology sessions was dedicated to the return of the salmon to the El-wha River. I learned the importance of these fish

to not only the river, but to the ecosystem as a whole. Salmon are an invaluable food source to a plethora of animals, big and small, from bears to other fish to insects. Salmon die and their bod-ies put nutrients into the soil, which benefits the plants as well.

I also attended the second day of the Science Symposium that was held entirely in the PC gym. There were very touching moments, like when a man named Dick Goin told his story. He had been walking that river since 1938, and remem-bered when the salmon runs still had their legen-dary status. But the majority of the day was spent talking about the importance of the dam removal as a whole. Elwha restoration involves the biggest dam removal in the history of our country and will hopefully spark more environ-mental projects and dam removals.

Being a high school student at the symposium offered a unique opportunity. I was able to see firsthand the scientific community, including bright minds from all over the world, coming together to complete a project 20 years in the making.

Kayla McLaughlin at the Elwha Science Symposium

Page 2

Report from the Field By Bryan Schlinkmann

Natural Resources

1 in the Field

As I stood on a bluff over-looking Lake Mills, I could not believe that by the time I die, this vast amount of water will be gone, and a forest will have taken its place. I will forever hold close to my heart the impact this valley has had on me. It was this moment and others just like it that made me want to take initiative in helping and pro-tecting our land.

I took an Elwha Natural Resources Field Course through the Skills Center in Port Angeles a year ago. Through this fantastic opportunity, I was contacted by the National Park Service. During this past summer, I was granted an internship working with the Olympic National Park Revegetation Crew. This was one of the best experiences of my life. Being able to have an experience like this at my age has opened a new world of career opportunities for me. Now I know what it would be like working a job that removes me from confinement of an office and puts me in the environment. On a daily basis we were outside either collecting seeds or working at the greenhouse.

As the Elwha Dam and the Glines Canyon Dam are removed from the Elwha River, the reser-voirs are going to need help growing proper native species. This is where the “reveg” crew comes into play. It is our job to collect native seeds that will one day be planted in the reser-voirs. We do this because we want to reduce the chances of non-native plants growing in the reservoirs. There is also a designated team whose job is to remove and control invasive spe-cies from around the Elwha River - especially around the reservoirs. While I learned all of this and more in my internship, you can learn more by visiting http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/elwha-revegetation.htm.

My internship was split evenly between working at the Matt Albright Native Plants center off of Old Olympic Highway, and working on seed collection out in the field. Once our reveg team collected seeds from the field, we would bring them back to the nursery to clean and propagate them. We have many techniques to do so. One is by putting the seeds through a blender to separate them. We then set the seeds out for a few days to dry so we can more easily filter them through a screen which removes any unwanted debris. The result is clean seeds that are ready to be stored for future planting.

From day one in my internship, I was put to work. One thing I was not used to was the amount of time working per day. I worked ten hour days, four days a week. This was a wake-up call in preparation for what I might face outside of high school. Even though they were long work days, this taught me how to properly manage my time by making me create timesheets, cal-endars, arrange meetings, follow deadlines, etc.

When I work in the field, a lot of the decisions that need to be made about collecting, like what seed types and how many seeds to collect, depend on the resources available. These decisions are often made on the spot, which can be challenging and rewarding. It was fulfill-ing to be able to come up with my own strategies for seed collection, and I can apply that learned decision making skill to other areas of my life. For instance if I took a job in the future with a trail crew of some sort, I would most likely use this decision making skill to find less complex ways to do tasks.

Whether I am working on trails in the Rocky Mountains, or collecting seed for revegetation projects at Lassen in California, I will be applying the skills I learned here to work for the rest of my life. This internship was a positive experience, and I now know that I would like to con-tinue with a career with the National Park Service. I know that twenty years from now when I revisit the bluff I stood atop to look over Lake Mills, it will be a completely new land, full of forested vegetation and life not seen by the reservoir in more than 100 years.

Follow Restoration at www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/elwha-ecosystem-restoration.htm

Restoring the Elwha Valley One Plant at a Time

Troy Nicolaysen surveys salmon at Salt Creek

The crew at Elwha River by the new hatchery

The crew samples bugs at Valley Creek 1.0

The crew observes Elwha Dam deconstruction

Bryan Schlinkmann collects native salal seeds

Page 3

Global Issue Opinion: Pollution By Hailey Whitney

I love to eat salmon. They taste so amazing and delicious that I’m not sure what I would do if they were gone. On the occasion that salmon do go extinct, I would scour the earth for any salmon I could get my hands on, and savor it for every spec of flesh off the bone. Luckily though, they aren’t gone yet.

Throughout the history of the earth salmon have endured and adapted to the ever changing circumstance on this planet. Even the ice age couldn’t snuff out this tough fish. By migrating to warmer waters the Pacific salmon continued to survive all the way up to until just recently. Only a couple of centuries ago our friend the salmon encountered man and his machines.

In the 1800’s and through the late 1900’s Northwest fishing companies acted as the ultimate body of death to the salmon. According to re-search I did in Natural Resources 1 class, from 1870-79 around 22.7 million pounds of salmon were ripped out of the water. Then from 1980-89, just a hundred years later, only 5.4 million pounds of salmon were caught. Within that short amount of time we almost caught them all but some intelligent individuals noticed that we were fishing the salmon to extinction and slowed down major commercial fishing for many years. Numbers of salmon in the Northwest are nowhere near the massive salmon populations of yester-year.

Recently there has been a lot of talk over the news of the removal of the Elwha dams. The removal of these dams will dramatically change the condition of our Pacific salmon habitat, for better, and for worse. The removal of these dams will make way for the returning run of spawning salmon for many years to come. As well as clearing the path for fish, this dam removal will wash out into the river and ocean a build up of decades of sediment that was trapped behind the dams. This will, as some scientist predict, be very deadly to salmon in the river for the next few years after the dam removal. The clouded, muddy condition of the water during this time will surely suffocate fish in the water. Still in recovery from the massive butchery of the early 1900’s the salmon species might suffer extinction in the Elwha. Luckily our salmon are in the trustworthy hands of the salmon fisheries. The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe has taken the time and money to facilitate hun-dreds of thousands of fish and fish eggs for the purpose of keeping the species alive and well even through the “sediment flooding.”

Many forces have threatened salmon over the years. Somehow they endured the ice age and they boldly faced man and his deadly fishing techniques, and now that we are helping the salmon I am sure that we will be able to enjoy the zazzy flavor of this anadromous fish forever. So remember the next time you take a bite of some juicy sockeye or delicious king that you are about to consume one tough fishy that has endured the hardships of earth for millions of years.

Opinion: Our Friend Salmon By Conan McCarty

us sick. Pollution affects everyone and everything.

I wanted to know more about pollution than what I did in the past. I knew that pollution affects everyone but how badly I did not know. So on I went to do some research on pollution and learned that it can kill us if we don’t do some of the little things I told you about already in this article.

Has pollution gotten out of hand? A lot of people such as the Chinese would say yes. Pollution has been a huge problem for a long time. Just little things like using garbage cans and recycling can help though.

Who does pollution affect? Pollution affects us locally but more than that it affects the world. Not only does the United States suffer from pollu-tion, but so do other countries such as China. According to BBC news in Beijing, China’s pollution is causing hundreds of thousands of premature deaths annually. (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6265098.stm)

What causes pollution? Factories, dumps, and sewers cause pollution because they flow into the waters and can kill any living animals. Ac-

cording to some experts that study the creeks, rivers, and oceans, there are a lot of other things that can cause a lot of pollution. Even electric-ity can cause pollution; it’s the way we make electricity.

For the last few generations we have used the ocean and fresh water eco-systems as dumps. We put in cars, tires, refrigerators, and other things that could kill sea life. The examples of sea life affected are the birds and fish. This fall I saw two metal rods that were in Valley Creek which shows that our local creeks could be polluted too.

We have so much to rebuild and we also have to fix the problems. For example to not use the oceans, lakes and our creeks as a dump would be a good thing. Also, maybe we should get rid of some of the factories. Us-ing a garbage can is a way to clean out things that don’t belong in the water. If we don’t then we will kill a lot of the wild life and it would make

Pollution, how many deaths has it caused,

and are we next?

Hailey Whitney works at Valley Creek river mile 1

905 West 9th Street

Port Angeles, WA 98363

(360) 565-1892

www.nopsc.org/naturalresources

Sk i l l s Cente r Natura l Resour ces

gxÜÜt VÉzÇ|àt @ A student’s way of understanding the earth

Page 4

Cover Art-Hannah McNabb

Layout-Hailey Whitney

Photos-Andrew Colvin

Teacher-Dan Lieberman

Skills Center Natural Resources offers a variety of hands-on skills

training options for students 16-21 who do not have a high school

diploma. Enrollment is open now.

Join the Adventure! Enroll in Natural Resources Program Today!

they’re still dangerous! They can and will sting you out of water so leave them alone. A sting from one of these jellyfish isn’t really deadly, but it is quite painful, almost like being stung by a bee.

According to Tiffany Pate who is the naturalist for the Arthur D Feiro Marine Life Center, in pristine natural conditions a lion’s mane jellyfish bell can reach up to 8ft and their tentacles can reach up to 25 to 50 ft long. Since available food sources aren’t what they used to be, due to pollution and habitat loss, the average lion’s mane jellyfish’s bell only grows to be about 6 to 10 in wide.

Because these jellyfish normally live in highly productive open ocean waters, they are accustomed to a much more abundant source of fish and plankton than they find in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Since their food supply shrinks when they come into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, these jellyfish often die of starvation by the end of the summer.

By this same time next year the tiny baby jellies, which are now cling-ing to the pilings of the pier, will have grown up in the shallow waters around the pier. Then once they reach adulthood they’ll make the jour-ney out to the open waters just as their parents had done before them.

Would you like Jelly with that? By Lauryn Last Fall has arrived, which marks the time when Chinook salmon come up stream to complete their last stage of the life cycle….to spawn. But that’s not the only animal that is being pushed into our bay. The Pacific Jellyfish are pushed into the Strait of Juan de Fuca because of Fall and Winter ocean currents. On Oct. 9th, hundreds of small appropriately named brown lion’s mane jelly-fish were spotted on the shores of Port Angeles’ waterfront. They were also accompanied by a swarm of nettle jellyfish, which have yellow bells and red tentacles. These jellies are common around the Port Angeles city pier.

We are not the only place on the Peninsula visited by these beautiful creatures. Other places you can spot these swarms of jellyfish are off the shores of both Fort Flagler and Cape George where jellyfish often wash ashore around this time of year. Even when you come across these jellyfish on the shores

During spring semester, Port Angeles High School students can complete their senior culminating project, earn 0.5 lab science credits, and log community service hours with Natural Resources. Four options are available including Feiro Marine Life Center, Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, Streamkeepers, and Olympic National Park. Call the Skills Center at 565-1533 to enroll.

Natural Resources Senior Culminating Projects with Skills Center

Come See Natural Resources SCP Community Presentations Feiro Marine Life Center (Port Angeles City Pier) Tuesday, January 24th, 3-6pm Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary

(2nd Floor Landing Building) Thursday, January 26, 3-6pm Streamkeepers of Clallam County

(Skills Center Room 206) Monday, January 23rd, 4-6pm Olympic National Park Visitor Center

(2003 Mt. Angeles Rd.—Top of Race St.) Sunday, January 22nd, 11-1pm