Forage fish spawning beach restoration design and implementation in the Salish Sea

Forage fish including surf smelt (Hypomesus pretiosus) and Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes personatus), also called candlefish, spawn on upper intertidal beaches in the Salish Sea, and are the primary food for returning adult salmon. In order to offset the long term degradation of forage fish beach spawning habitat, numerous recent restoration, monitoring, and research projects have been undertaken, especially in Washington State. This talk will focus on larger and long installed forage fish beach restoration projects. A series of case studies and lessons learned will be presented for a suite of forage fish beach restoration/enhancement will be presented. Case studies will include armor removal, beach nourishment, structure relocation, and mitigation efforts to reduce impacts of old and recent armor and sediment input reduction. Project examples begin with data collection in 1996 for a one-mile-long 1998 project in Bellingham Bay and continue through several case studies illustrating differing problems and approaches from both Puget Sound and Vancouver Island. The talk will outline site selection methods and approach and will include discussion of feasibility analysis, design goals established to maximize longevity of forage fish beach spawning areas, and approaches to minimize on-going project maintenance. Consideration of coastal processes and sediment transport, along with consideration of alterations in these processes were key elements in feasibility analysis and design. Several sites include long-term physical performance assessment through repeated beach surveying with lesser amounts of repeated forage fish egg density surveys. Impacts addressed in the case studies include the construction of new and legacy shore protection structures, which both directly buried and/or eliminated the sediment source for maintaining beach spawning habitats through cutting off feeder bluffs. Legacy structures refer to the cumulative impacts of older shore protection structures within littoral drift cells