"A Whole New World Is Emerging" At The Mouth Of The Dam-Free Elwha
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After a 100-year hiatus, the Elwha is back at work moving sediment, carrying some of it all the way to the river mouth, where a whole new world is emerging.
Surveys both by airplane and by an underwater video camera show a kelp armageddon is under way. The amount of floating kelp at the river mouth and east to the Ediz Hook has already been reduced by 44 percent in the year since dam removal began, said Helen Berry, marine ecologist at the state Department of Natural Resources.
Underwater video also shows a dramatic shift on the sea floor, with a transition in one year from lush pastures of seafloor plants to a war zone of tattered vegetation and large areas nearly denuded. The reason is sediment. It is blocking light in the water column, and smothering the rocky seafloor with soft mounds of fine material transported by the Elwha, making it unsuitable for the holdfasts which kelp species need to affix themselves to the seafloor.
But scientists think the kelp’s demise is a gain for other species, in a reset of the nearshore ecology to a more normal state. Old maps show no kelp at the river mouth and east to the Ediz Hook. The accretion of soft sediment is expected to provide habitat for sea grasses that nurture salmon, said Anne Shaffer of the Coastal Watershed Institute in Port Angeles. Soft, sandy beaches also could provide spawning grounds for a chrome tide of sea smelt and sand lance.
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http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020577152_elwhasedimentxml.html
