Members of the Hoonah Stewards Council met to review results of 7 years of studying shellfish populations in a local watershed. You can read about those results on our website.
In Attendance : Ian Johnson, Elizabeth Figus, Erica Drahozal, Makayla Hecker, Olivia Mills, Jennifer Nu, Julian Narvaez, Jeromy Grant, Jackson Combs, Jackie Dick
Meeting Notes
- Olivia Mills has been working with Elizabeth to do the summary doc and then working over the next year to publish this in a scientific journal. They will be adding 2025 data coming up
- Olivia – from Juneau. Going to school in Spokane, WA. Worked with HIA this summer through SHI interneship. Through that worked on this publication has provided an inside perspective on writing a publication. Has helped with her school writing and academic and career.
Report is short report to provide insights from the data. This is a special project because it was started a long time ago – 8 years of data. Also overlaps with a large weather event, the December 2020 event. Going into the analysis and report we thought was there would be an overall decline in abundance. We thought the 2020 event completely “wiped them out”. Also that it would change the compositionof the beach’s sand.
The study design is unique because every 4 years we repeat the same sites, but the sites are random in years 1-4. So, the same sites in 2018 were sampled again in 2022. This gives us direct comparisons before and after the events.
Key Findings
- The most striking thing – in 2021 we found no little neck clams (steamers)
- In 2020 to 2021 drastic reductions in # found from 2020 to 2021.
- There was a change in what started growing after 2020. More rockweed and blue mussels started to colonize
- Abundance – there was an obvious drop in 2021 for all species. But in 2022 – 2024 there was rebound to the levels before disturbance. This was similar for length
- Distribution has changed a lot. The heatmaps show the likely hood that a species would be found at a given site in a given year.
- Heat maps – direct comparison of holes to holes in years where sample sites overlape, 2018/2022, 2019/2023, 2020/2024
- In 2018 and 2022 heat maps. There was a bright red, high likely hood area. There was an area you could rely on. After December 202 Atmospheric River, nothing is bright. They are more spread out. In a nutshell, the data show why it is harder to find butterclams for food or science because they are more spread out after the AR event.
- The initial assessment was suprising because overall abundance didn’t change much, but distribution did change.
- It was clear the AR event did “wipe out” the beach the year after. But there was a recovery and we are seeing a good recovery on the beach overall. However, thehistorical places where they were found they are no longer reliable.
Future Work.
Future work will include using results from the 2025 surveys. We’ll continue to survey the beach each year and may look more closely at blue mussels.
Literature suggests that blue mussels could compete with food and oxygen.
What food preference do blue mussells like?
A future experiment could be to clear blue mussells from an area
Question – as there are most atmosphereic rivers and possible effects on foods. Heard that Wrangell in disaster declaration that they don’t affect just buildings, they affect food systems too. Important to be documenting.
Question – does construction affect clam and cockles?
With all the changes noted. I am curious if construction in the Garteeni area affect how the water flows. Also when you folks are checking on how man shellfish are in the area do you study what are in the mud? If there are any kind of chemical showing in the mud? I notice when I go down to the harbor float seen all kind of waste around the dock water. A lot of people live on their boat no telling what the owners dump in the water. Jackie