King County’s little red fish swims back from brink of extinction

It’s been a banner year for kokanee salmon, which nearly disappeared from Lake Sammamish, east of Seattle.

More of the little red fish have spawned in streams above the lake, King County’s second largest, in 2024 than at any other time in a decade.

“This is a more successful year than we even thought was possible,” King County kokanee recovery manager Alison Agness said.

Kokanee are sockeye salmon that spend their whole lives in freshwater, rather than migrating to the ocean and back like most salmon.

“The kokanee salmon have been with us for as long as we have inhabited the lake,” Snoqualmie Tribe member Sabeqwa de los Angeles said as several brightly colored kokanee swam up Sammamish’s Ebright Creek behind her.

“Seeing the kokanee salmon come back in high numbers is always very exciting for me. Personally, it's emotional,” de los Angeles added.

Agness said the kokanee started swimming upstream to spawn a bit early this year.

“If you would have come here just a week ago, you would have seen the entire creek pretty much covered in kokanee,” Agness said.

Before kokanee populations collapsed in the 20th century, the fatty red fish provided an important winter food for the Snoqualmie and other tribes.

“It really feels like if they can return home, then our people can also return home and do what we've done for thousands of years, which is come together as a community and — with our sovereign rights — show that we are Snoqualmie and that we are still here,” de los Angeles said.

Centralized hatcheries pump out kokanee and dump them into dozens of lakes around Washington for anglers to pursue.

But in Washington, wild kokanee, with their distinct DNA, are known to survive in only four lakes: Chilliwack, Ozette, Whatcom and seven-mile-long Sammamish, near the eastern edge of Seattle's suburbs.

The little red fish, about half the size of ocean-going sockeye salmon, are thought to have died out in Seattle’s Lake Washington, just downriver from Lake Sammamish, decades ago.

In 2018, only 19 kokanee spawned in creeks that run into Lake Sammamish.

“They were on the brink of an extinction,” Agness said.

King County declared an emergency to save Lake Sammamish kokanee.

Since 2018, King County and the city of Sammamish have removed seven fish-stopping culverts, enabling kokanee to reach 4.4 miles of spawning grounds above Lake Sammamish that were previously out of reach.

The Snoqualmie Tribe, other groups, and homeowners around the lake have restored spawning streams and raised Sammamish kokanee in hatcheries until the fry were old enough to evade predators and survive the lake’s increasing summertime heat.

The efforts came too late for a population of kokanee that spawned in summer. Now only fish that spawn in late fall survive.

While kokanee spawners surging from 279 to at least 6,800 since last year has fish fans celebrating, kokanee numbers have boomed and busted in the past.

“The lake has remained hot, and in the summer, as the lake stratifies, there's really just a narrow band where the kokanee can exist,” Agness said.

In the summer heat, the fish are limited to waters deep enough to stay cool and shallow enough to have sufficient oxygen.

Other threats, including toxic roadway runoff and invasive predators such as perch, remain. Light pollution from the lake's many waterfront homes also attracts and endangers young kokanee by exposing them to predators.

“We have to keep doing this work,” de los Angeles said.

While many tribes have “first salmon” ceremonies to welcome the first returning adults back to their spawning grounds, kokanee are still too scarce for the Snoqualmie or others to harvest.

De los Angeles said the Snoqualmie tribe’s relationship with kokanee is focused on conservation for now, with the release of young kokanee into the lake each fall, after dangerous summer heat has waned — a ceremonial highlight.

“Putting them into the lake from the canoe is hugely emotional and always brings kind of a breath of fresh air into the work that we do,” she said.