Salmon embracing new bridge, habitat on shores of Navy's Indian Island
INDIAN ISLAND — The return of young salmon to the eelgrass beds of the tidelands below Indian Island's sandstone-stacked bluffs has been swift following the removal of an earthen causeway that opened fish passage.
Even Bill Kalina, the island's longtime environmental program manager for the Navy, was taken aback by the jump in the number of juvenile salmon since the causeway was replaced with the bridge at the south end of Kilisut Harbor.
"We weren't expecting these results so quickly," Kalina said. "It happened almost overnight."
For the past 75 years, the causeway's two small culverts were the only way saltwater — and the life traveling in it — traversed Oak Bay north to Kilisut, bordered on both sides by Indian and Marrowstone islands. But in 2020, a $12.6 million state project replaced the causeway, hauling away about 9,000 dump truck loads of sediment and old road, with a 440-foot-long concrete girder bridge.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/salmon-embracing-new-bridge-habitat-on-shores-of-navy-s-indian-island/ar-AAY8spx
