In the beginning of May, a biennial research conference was held in Seattle called the Salish Sea Conference. This event began a number of years ago. It initially focused solely on information about the health of the Puget Sound and its biota.

More recently, it was refocused on the larger connected bodies of water once plied by the Coast Salish peoples from Canada to Washington.

That refocus includes the waters that start at the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Strait of Georgia and connect the Frazer River, Desolation Sound, the inland waterway between Vancouver Island and the mainland where you find the Gulf Islands and the San Juan Islands, Whidbey Sound, and all of Puget Sound and Hood Canal.

All these bodies of water are connected and researchers and policy makers alike have realized that they influence each other so they all should share the information they collectively have for the system’s benefit.

At this year’s conference, there were many presentations about the Salish Sea’s water quality, aquatic biota, overall health and threats to its main rivers and bays. However, there was another type of aquatic system that was highlighted with its own session of presentations — lowland streams. These streams and creeks flow directly into the larger waterways of Puget Sound or the other large bays and straits.

It turns out there are hundreds of these stream systems and they are important. They represent a huge area of the Puget Sound shoreline.  They typically are characterized by relatively low grade (small elevation gains as you move up them) and have creek corridors that are relatively small.

Just because the stream width bank-to-bank may be small does not mean they are draining small watersheds.

In Kitsap, there are 126 of these creeks and they drain the entire landscape. Think about it: we have no major rivers in Kitsap County.  Where does all that rain water go? It either seeps into the ground or it flows into a creek near you.

Many of these streams support multiple salmon species along with the other wildlife and plant communities and forests. Since orca eat a lot of chinook and they were the first salmon to be listed as endangered in Washington under the Endangered Species Act, chinook are perhaps the most commonly discussed salmon.

While chinook do not spawn in small streams — preferring the gravels for their nests found in large rivers as they grow and mature — they make use of the lowland stream mouths, pocket estuaries and small bays where streams enter saline waters, to rest, feed and grow.

There areas are very important as they move from their natal (birth) stream toward the ocean. They will then spend their years in the ocean before they return to the Puget Sound as adults. The beach seining that has been done in Apple Tree Cove and in Carpenter Creek has demonstrated the Carpenter Creek estuary is providing food and resting area for chum, pinks, coho, and chinook as well as other resident fishes and smaller forage fishes that serve themselves as food for other larger fish.

As a matter of fact, our very own Carpenter Creek and its culvert replacement project was featured as one of the lowland streams talked about at the conference. Stillwaters gave a presentation of the data collected on the sediment changes at the new bridge over the first year of the bridge. The talk was well received and may result in additional scientific study of the estuary in the future.

One other presentation at the lowland streams session of the conference was given by the Wild Fish Conservancy. The conservancy has been performing detailed analyses of streams in Kitsap County to determine if the mapping of Kitsap stream reaches bearing fish are accurate and complete. The conservancy is finding that many are not — and the stream systems are actually larger than originally thought. So there may be much more riparian (stream) habitat than first thought.

All of that habitat will serve to preserve and protect all the fish, birds and critters we have come to expect to be part of our home in nature-rich Kitsap.

So remember: even that lowly creek in your back yard or down the street is important to Puget Sound and the Salish Sea.

— Betsy Cooper is a board member and stream monitor at Stillwaters Environmental Education Center. Contact her betsycooper1@gmail.com