Fish research

Marine fish are an essential part of the Salish Sea ecosystem and the global oceans. At Beam Reach we focus our fish sustainability science on the salmon that southern resident killer whales prey upon, but also study bottom and forage fish in partnership with regional organizations like the University of Washington (UW) and the National Ocean and Atmosphere Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NOAA/NWFSC). If you have found one of our moorings
please contact us at 206-251-5554 (Scott) or 206-543-9042 (Tom) to coordinate its return. Each mooring has a float and yellow polypropylene line tethered to a black canister.We will be happy to thank you profusely, compensate you a reasonable amount, and/or give you a personal tour of our research project!
Salmon tracking in the San Juan ArchipelagoIn 2011-2012 we collaborated with Dr. Tom Quinn and Fred Goetz of the UW Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences, Kurt Fresh and Anna Kagley of NOAA/NWFSC, and Tina Echeverria with San Juan County funding from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board. The project goal was to study how salmon utilize the San Juan Archipelago by deploying a network of Vemco fish tag receivers in the Islands and then tracking juvenile and adult salmon that are instrumented with acoustic tags. Below are links to further information about the project, its implementation, and preliminary results.

Salmon school passes around the fish tag receiver mooring at Lime Kiln State Park

Project map (Google map in which green markers denote deployed receivers, magenta are recovered from our UW/NOAA collaboration (2011-2013), yellow were planned sites for 2011-12, red are other potential sites, and blue are landmarks):
View San Juan fish tag receiver deployments in a larger map