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No Longer Accepting Applications for 2024 – Spawner Survey Internship Fall 2024

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This position is no longer accepting applications for Fall of 2024.

Do you like working outside? The Spawner Survey Intern assists SFEG staff in monitoring salmon populations in the Skagit and Samish Watersheds.

The spawner survey intern assists SFEG staff in implementing the spawner survey program for selected restoration sites.  The intern will participate in the SFEG spawner survey workshop on October 5th 2024, receive training in how to identify adult salmon species and redds, conduct weekly surveys on one or more streams, and assist with data entry, analysis, and reporting.  This program documents salmon spawning in proposed and completed restoration sites. This information is useful in understanding the effectiveness of restoration efforts and is used by WDFW for escapement forecasting. The intern works with SFEG field staff and other volunteers to carry out this work.  MUST BE ABLE TO USE A PERSONAL VEHICLE TO GET TO WORK SITES.

The spawner survey intern may be invited to assist with other activities such as weekend work parties and juvenile salmon data collection for additional experience/hours.

SFEG is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace.  We strongly encourage people of all backgrounds to apply for this internship opportunity.  The outdoors should be for everyone and we know that has traditionally not been the case, with many people being left out of environmental based careers.  We recognize the need to confront this inequity within our organization.  SFEG is actively working to create more avenues for entry level positions for traditionally marginalized communities to work in the environmental field.

Qualifications

Applicants should have a background and interest in environmental science/studies, biology, monitoring, outdoor recreation, and/or salmon. Applicants must be able to identify or must be willing to learn to identify native Pacific salmon. Must have the ability to work with volunteers and provide own vehicle for transportation. This position requires work outside in all types of weather, and the applicant must be capable of walking on uneven ground. (Other gear such as waders and boots will be provided).

Time Commitment: This position begins mid October 2024 and will be concluded mid January-early February 2025. The Intern will work with SFEG staff and/or volunteers minimum 1 weekday per week but up to 2 days per week. Regular work hours TBD.

To Apply: Upload Resume with  Online Application

 
SFEG will provide equal opportunity for employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, sensory, physical or mental disability, veteran status, protected genetic information or any other status protected under state or federal law.

 

Spawner Survey Shenanigans

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by Maddie Hicks

Starting in late October, my spawner survey partner, Eric, and I began our weekly voyage up Ennis and Upper Brickyard Creeks in search of returning adult salmon.  Equipped with our surveying gear and our gloves and socks stuffed with hand warmers, we traversed over log jams and through thickets of blackberry for about a mile of cumulative stream channel.  For the first several weeks of the season, the streams were desolate and even dry in places.  Despite a dismal start, we were welcomed on our fourth survey by over a hundred of the most brilliantly red coho that had been patiently waiting downstream in the Samish River.  We were off to the races!

As we walked upstream for each survey thereafter, we recorded the numbers of live fish, carcasses, and redds (gravel nests that salmon dig to deposit their fertilized eggs) we found.  Not only are these surveys a day well spent getting to hang out with, what in my opinion are the coolest animals ever; the data we collect is also extremely important for salmon recovery.  At the end of the spawner season, we send our numbers to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife where they are used to make escapement (i.e. spawner abundance) estimates.  These estimates, in turn, are used to monitor population trends and ultimately guide restoration efforts.

During the final weeks of the survey season, we decided to hike past the upstream extent of our reach on Ennis Creek to a waterfall that we’d been told about.  As we admired the waterfall, sweaty and exhausted with twigs and plant pieces sticking out of our clothes, I couldn’t help but think about the amazing resiliency of salmon.  We had only retraced the smallest fraction of the entire journey that a salmon travels in its lifetime.  Salmon are anadromous, meaning that they are born in their natal freshwater streams and migrate out to the ocean, sometimes even thousands of miles north to the Gulf of Alaska, just to swim all the way back to where they started.  Not to mention faced with a slew of natural and anthropogenic obstacles along the way like predators, lack of suitable habitat, and passage barriers. 

Rifling through the pages of my stinky, scale-covered field notebook, we counted a total of 298 fish in Ennis and 17 in Upper Brickyard this season (as well as some bonus findings like pumpkins, a basketball, a foldable chair, and a charcoal barbeque).  Numbers are up from last year for the two reaches that we surveyed, but in past years counts have been in the thousands.  We have a long way to go but we’re making improvements with every restoration project that we and other organizations throughout the watershed implement.  Until next year, spawners!