The Edmonds Stream Team released 5,000 “baby” chum salmon into lower Shell Creek on Monday.

These chum salmon “fry” were donated by the Suquamish Tribe to help community effort to bolster salmon populations in local creeks that flow directly to Puget Sound, said Joe Scordino, Edmonds Stream Team project leader.

This community salmon enhancement program, authorized under cooperative agreements between the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Edmonds Stream Team and Sound Salmon Solutions, will in the coming months also involve releasing coho salmon fry from the Edmonds’ Willow Creek Salmon Hatchery to Perrinville Creek, Lunds Gulch Creek (in Meadowdale BeachPark), Boeing Creek, Northstream Creek, Willow Creek, Shellabarger Creek and Shell Creek (in Yost Park and downstream).

Although Shell Creek had a record return of spawning chum salmon this past fall (see related story here), many of their eggs laid in the creek’s gravel were likely smothered by sediment and silt caused by increased city stormwater flows into Shell Creek. The sediment flow was so bad in 2024 that it filled and blocked the creek under a longstanding bridge, requiring emergency action to allow fish passage (related story here.).

The Suquamish Tribe’s chum salmon fry will stay in Shell Creek — along with the same-age chum fry hatched in the creek — for up to two weeks, imprinting to this creek before heading out to sea. This contrasts with coho salmon fry, which spend the first year of their life in the creek. The chum salmon that survive life at sea will return as adults in three to four years to spawn in Shell Creek.

The City of Edmonds should be proud to have so many property owners along the creek that support preserving our streams for salmon and allowing the Edmonds Stream Team to study and enhance salmon and their habitat, Scordino said. “Special thanks for this successful salmon release go to Sandra Centala (property owner), the Suquamish Tribe and the Edmonds Environmental Council board members who assisted the Stream Team,” he added.

Additional photos of the Suquamish Tribe’s Grovers Creek Hatchery and the transport/release of the chum salmon fry to Shell Creek are posted on the Edmonds Environmental Council’s website.