Ecological Baselines For Oregon’s Coast

A report for agencies that manage Oregon’s coastal habitats

Roberta L. Hall, Editor

Thomas A. Ebert

Jennifer S. Gilden

David R. Hatch

Karina Lorenz Mrakovcich

Courtland L. Smith

Ecological Baselines For Oregon’s Coast

A report for agencies that manage Oregon’s coastal habitats for ecological and economic sustainability, and for all who are interested in the welfare of wildlife that inhabit our coast and its estuaries.

Editor: Roberta L. Hall, Emeritus Professor, Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University

Contributing Authors: Thomas A. Ebert, Emeritus Professor, Department of Biology, San Diego State University

Jennifer S. Gilden, Associate Staff Officer, Communications and Information, Pacific Fishery Management Council

Roberta L. Hall, Emeritus Professor, Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University

David R. Hatch, Founding member, the Elakha Alliance; member, the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians

Karina Lorenz Mrakovcich, Professor, Science Department, U.S. Coast Guard Academy

Courtland L. Smith, Emeritus Professor, School of Language, Culture, and Society, Oregon State University

Corvallis, Oregon April 2012

To request additional copies, or to contact an author, e-mail the editor: [email protected]

Printed by the Oregon State University Department of Printing and Mailing Services, Corvallis, Oregon, April 2012.

Contents

Baselines for Oregon’s coastal resources 5 Shifting baselines ...... 5 Goal for this report ...... 6 Baseline chapters ...... 7 References ...... 7 Prehistoric baselines 9 Introduction ...... 9 Methods for studying prehistoric resources ...... 10 The physical environment in the Late Holocene ...... 12 Animals resident on the Oregon coast before 1750 ...... 14 Invasive species and native species extinctions ...... 16 Estuaries, past and present: degradation and restoration ...... 17 Conclusions ...... 19 Acknowledgements ...... 19 References ...... 20 Appendix: Resources and references for Prehistoric baselines 22 Sites providing faunal data ...... 23 Bibliography ...... 23 Sea mammal list ...... 28 Invertebrate list ...... 29 Bird list ...... 30 Fish list ...... 31 Shifting salmon baselines 33

Introduction ...... 33 Shifting nature of baselines ...... 34 History of management ...... 36 Regional and species comparisons ...... 37 Converging constraints on salmon ...... 38 Natural factors affecting salmon numbers ...... 38 Human factors affecting salmon numbers ...... 40 Conclusion ...... 47 References ...... 48 The sea otter in Oregon’s past and present 55 Reduction of estuaries, depletion of fish ...... 56 Translocation attempts and sea otter diversity ...... 57 Estuary history and restoration ...... 58 References ...... 59 Purple sea urchins along the Oregon coast 61 Geographic distribution ...... 62 General biology of purple sea urchins ...... 62 Early work with purple sea urchins ...... 64 Growth, size and recruitment ...... 66 Conclusions ...... 72 References ...... 73 Reflections on baselines and restoration 77 What we learned ...... 77 Another paradigm ...... 78 Ecosystem restoration ...... 78 References ...... 79

Ecological Baselines 5

Historical Baselines for Oregon’s Coastal Resources What was the Oregon coast like in the past? Roberta L. Hall, Emeritus Professor, Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University

Against the backdrop of growing concern about dead zones, rare and endangered sea mammals, depletion of Oregon’s once‐abundant fish stocks, acidification threatening coastal molluscs, and proposals for marine reserves along Oregon’s coastline, a multi‐ disciplinary group of scientists was called together in 2008 to discuss what is known about Oregon’s coastal resources at specific points in the past. They agreed that knowing more about the condition of resources in the past could help state resource agencies understand its ecological potential and such information would be useful in planning restoration projects as well as determining gaps in knowledge that need to be filled. Called together by John Meyer, representing Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea (COMPASS), the group decided to develop an “Ecological Baselines” report on past coastal resources at whatever times empirical data exist.

The range of any human’s life and experiences is too brief and too circumscribed to view ecological change in any but a personal and therefore limited perspective. For example, since 1966, my family has observed birds on numerous trips to the Oregon coast. Although these visits always provide unexpected and interesting sightings, it appears to us that the number and diversity of birds have declined. Other people have made similar observations about various animals and plants. To be useful in understanding the status of any species or of the ecosystem as a whole, however, what is needed is a compilation of empirical records using specified methodologies and covering a longer period of time. Comprehensive empirical surveys of natural resources, at known intervals, would be desirable. The problem is that such surveys, for the most part, do not exist. Without such data, what results are “shifting baselines.”

Shifting baselines In 1995, fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly published “Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries,” a criticism of fisheries scientists for comparing current conditions with what they witnessed earlier in their careers without considering prior, potentially less‐ depleted periods:

Essentially, this syndrome has arisen because each generation of fisheries scientists accepts as a baseline the stock size and species composition that occurred at the beginning of their careers.... When the next generation starts its career, the stocks have further declined, but it is the stocks at that time that serve as a new baseline (Pauly 1995: 430).

Other researchers adopted the term, often citing “shifting baselines” to describe how expectations for recovery of various resources occurs. This means that people often choose the most convenient benchmark of what a past situation is like, even though its time depth is shallow. At worst, it means choosing a baseline that supports an argument the speaker or writer is advancing. Pauly’s “shifting baselines” suggests that significant changes to a system or to the status of a particular species tend to be measured against the remembered “past status” of the observer rather than against an empirical standard. Over

6 Ecological Baselines time, because each new generation of scientist observers is younger and has a more recent earliest memory, the baseline of each becomes progressively less robust and the expectations for recovery are confused and diluted; goals and achievements both decline.

Pauly (1995) addressed scientists in his essay in a professional journal, but clearly policy makers, commercial resource users, and the public in general also fall prey to this syndrome. It is not the exclusive weakness of any set of natural resource managers. Most of us naturally fall victim to it.

When should coastal resources be considered to have been pristine? And where are the data that tabulate the status of such resources, at various time periods? Acknowledging the existence of shifting baselines, and going further to postulate that the culture that created them is the same one that is responsible for causing depletion of resources, what is the remedy? One part of the problem is that resource managers in the same culture that produced the problem depend on empirical, relatively well‐defined measures of a resource, both for planning preservation and doing recovery work – but no ready measurements of many of the coastal resources in question exist for significant points or periods in the past. In addition, we know that many natural processes produce variations in specific resource, so there exists no obvious or agreed‐upon basis for determining how or when resources – individual species, or entire ecosystems – were as they “should” be. These are barriers that must be crossed.

In some cases, realization of the absence of data prompted studies of the status of a resource because people involved in managing them became aware that it was being depleted. For example, Bruce Mate’s (1973) doctoral dissertation was the first comprehensive research and evaluation of the status of the Northern (or Steller) sea lion, Eumetopias jubatus, and the California sea lion, Zalophus californianus, in Oregon. Kenyon and Rice (1961) pioneered surveys on the Steller sea lion in Alaska, but did not examine its status in Oregon. Anecdotal information about sea mammal depletion also existed previously, but systematic surveys began with Mate’s work, and a similar time scale applies to many other coastal resources as well.

Goal for this report Our original goal for this report on baselines was to summarize what is known about the past status of many key coastal resources and provide these summaries to Oregon natural resource agencies, legislators, local politicians, citizen committees, and others who may deal with specific resource issues but would benefit from a broad historical picture. In 2009, several members of the working group produced a symposium at the twentieth biennial conference of the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation and were pleased to receive encouragement from the international scientists who attended (CERF 2009). John Meyer organized the symposium but moved to another job in Washington state and I agreed to encourage team members to continue the project and produce a written report. In doing so, I became much more aware than I had been of the paucity of historical data and of the major efforts required to synthesize what does exist.

However, most members of the team were hard pressed to set aside funded research on current issues in favor of doing historical research, particularly since no grants were available to help them devote time to the project. Research grants are more frequently Ecological Baselines 7 available to perform new studies than to summarize past data for public consumption, even though the need for them is known to be great (Jackson et al. 2001; Lotze et al. 2006). Therefore, I am very grateful for the efforts of the authors who joined with me in completing this work.

Baseline chapters We begin this report with a chapter reviewing archaeological, ethnographic, and historic materials to provide a picture of Oregon’s coastal resources before 1750. Subsequent chapters consider salmon, sea otters, and sub‐tidal sea urchins. The salmon chapter provides details on twentieth century abundance and decline of one of Oregon’s most charismatic and economically important ocean resources. This chapter’s authors also evaluate remedies that have attempted to restore salmon species. Next, the sea otter chapter describes a mammal once abundant but no longer present on the Oregon coast, and discusses what the coast has lost by its demise. A decade ago, the author, a descendant of Aleut and Coos/Siuslaw natives, organized a multi‐disciplinary project, named The Elakha Alliance, to study and consider restoration of this keystone species. The sub‐tidal purple sea urchin, described in our fourth chapter, in contrast to salmon and otter, is so small that the intense labor required to harvest it has protected it from commercial harvesting. However, the urchin is affected by all the forces that impinge on the coast’s ecological web, and warming seas could affect its ability to survive along Oregon’s coast.

Not all developments in the past decades have been negative. We discuss major estuary restoration projects on the Salmon River and the Coquille River that show how restoration is working in these areas and that suggest how other estuary restorations could proceed. On Tuesday Feb. 22, 2012, the Oregon legislature passed a bill that will add 38 square miles of marine reserves in Oregon’s territorial waters at five locations. And in our final section, the epilogue discusses a significant new paradigm for understanding the process of ecological collapse, beginning with the removal of top consumers – keystone predators. This multi‐authored review, published in Science in 2011, thereby suggests ecosystem wide strategies for restoration and stability (Estes et al., 2011). Our report on historical, ecological baselines is only a first step in a compilation of information on significant coastal resources that we believe could encourage additional research and long‐ term strategies for restoration.

References Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation (CERF) (2009) Conference Program, Estuaries and Coast in a Changing World. November 1‐5, CERF, Portland Oregon. Estes, James A. et al. (2011) Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth. Science 333: 301‐306. Jackson, Jeremy B. C., et al. (2001) Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems. Science, New Series 293: 629‐638. Kenyon, Karl W and Dale W. Rice (1961) Abundance and Distribution of the Steller Sea Lion. Journal of Mammalogy 42 (2): 223‐234. Lotze, Heike K., et al. (2006) Depletion, Degradation, and Recovery Potential of Estuaries and Coastal Seas. Science, New Series 312: 1806‐1809.

8 Ecological Baselines

Mate, Bruce Reed (1973) Population Kinetics and Related Ecology of the Northern Sea Lion, Eumetopias Jubatus, and the California Sea Lion, Zalophus Californianus, along the Oregon Coast. Ph.d. Thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene. Pauly, Daniel (1995) Anecdotes and the Shifting Baseline Syndrome of Fisheries. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10(10): 430.

Ecological Baselines 9

Prehistoric Baselines Roberta L. Hall, Emeritus Professor, Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University

Most ecological research is based on local field studies lasting only a few years and conducted sometime after the 1950s without longer term historical perspective. Such observations fail to encompass the life‐spans of many ecologically important species and critically important environmental disturbances such as extreme cyclones or El Niño Southern Oscillation events (Jackson et al. 2001: 629).

Introduction If we wish to protect and enhance current resources on the Oregon coast, we must understand the physical environment and the biological resources that existed prior to Euro‐American settlement. To produce an accurate image of prehistoric baselines – resources in the period prior to 1750 – we must have multiple sources that provide details of a broad array of physical conditions plus what can be discerned of past human influences. Such sources allow us to flesh out the historic context and develop realistic baselines. It is the task of this report to introduce sources and methods, summarize available data, and draw conclusions.

Belief in the importance of knowing past resources is neither new nor revolutionary, yet it is rarely acted upon. The paper excerpted above, “Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems,” made a strong case for the importance of archaeological and historical data in the study of ecosystems (Jackson et al. 2001). A few years later in “Depletion, Degradation, and Recovery Potential of Estuaries and Coastal Seas” (Lotze et al. 2006), some of the same authors applied these concepts to estuaries, emphasizing the key role of studies that are historically and archaeologically based. Both appeared in the prominent journal Science.

The physical environment of the Pacific coast is shaped by powerful geological and climatic forces. The last glacial maximum climaxed around 20,000 years ago when ice covered much of the northern hemisphere and sea level was about 125 meters lower than it is today. Sea level rose as glaciers melted, but even after sea level stabilized about 6,000 years ago, a dynamic coastal environment including winds, tides, and earthquakes continued to re‐shape the coastline.

Humans arrived in North America perhaps 15,000 years ago and contributed to landscape changes. Archaeologists offer two alternative scenarios for earliest human occupation – a land‐based trek from Siberia across Beringia on lands now covered by the Bering Sea and a Pacific coast route (Hall et al. 2004). The earliest archaeological record of people on today’s Oregon coast comes from a site of approximately 12,000 years antiquity in the Samuel H. Boardman State Park north of Brookings (Davis et al. 2004). At that time, the actual coastline lay several kilometers west of its current location. Whether people traveled initially by sea, land, or both, data from Alaskan and British Columbian coastal sites show that native people have had a long residence on the coast and they developed great

10 Ecological Baselines familiarity with the coastal resources on which they depended. Living on the coast for many centuries, native people adapted to its resources but also helped to shape the landscape.

Methods for studying prehistoric resources Journals of European visitors

Spanish and English sailors traveled along the Oregon coast in the 1500s and 1600s, but their landings were few and locations are hard to pinpoint. Early mariners left few accounts of Oregon’s natural resources in their journals, which were focused primarily on topics of interest to financial backers and sovereigns. Journals of explorers, traders, and trappers in the 1800s provide more specific information about resources and people. Records of their travel and transactions, including purchases of resources from native people, provide a basis for understanding the resources they observed and the effects these outsiders had on the largely aboriginal land.

Archaeology and ethnology Knowledge of the Oregon coast as it was before the time of European exploration and exploitation is not in written form but can be extracted from ethnological, geological and archaeological research. Geo‐archaeological studies describe past environments, providing insights into the dynamic forces that make the physical framework for living resources. These forces continue to shape the coast. Ethnographies and oral histories offer native accounts of resources and suggest how coastal peoples adapted to, used, and modified them. Faunal remains and artifacts excavated from prehistoric archaeological sites provide data on animal groups such as fish, sea mammals, molluscs, and birds. It works like this: data found using one method, such as identification of bones recovered from an archaeological site, supplemented by tools from the same site, are compared to ethnographic reports detailing how native people traditionally caught the animals. Combined, these data authenticate and balance each other, and offer reconstructions of native use of existing resources (Lindsay 1995; Byram 2002). Scientists using these methods have produced a substantial literature and provide an excellent starting place for understanding the ecological past and the resource potential of our coast (See the Appendix for a list of sites providing faunal data, and references).

Faunal remains Natural historians in the past often considered the North American continent a virgin wilderness and portrayed the native use of resources as passive and without impact, but we now realize that people living in the Americas shaped their resources in addition to adapting their cultures to existing ones (Menzies 2006). “The myth of a pristine pre‐ Columbian landscape, untouched by human influence, is a popular one, but there is ample evidence to suggest that before the arrival of Europeans, aboriginal people not only used their resources but manipulated, impacted and sometimes in a very real sense ‘managed’ their resources and environment” (Notzke 1994:1) . When we reconstruct coastal resources before European settlement, we are describing a human landscape shaped over millennia.

Remains of animals people used as food, together with the implements they employed to harvest and prepare food, accumulated and formed shell middens that comprise a rich source of data on coastal and near‐coastal resources. Most coastal soils are acidic but Ecological Baselines 11 because people ate molluscs and deposited their waste shell and other animal remains, native settlements changed the soil pH from acidic to slightly alkaline, a condition that promotes bone preservation. Shell middens created over the past six thousand years, when sea level was similar to today’s, provide excellent records of past populations of animals living along the Oregon coast, data that we would not have without the existence of native middens (Hall 1995).

The most concentrated indigenous coastal settlements, just like the earliest European settlements, were along estuaries and rivers that offered plentiful food, shelter and transportation. Unfortunately, Euro‐American settlements atop former villages have caused the destruction of some significant archaeological sites and they cover other sites beneath current buildings, parking lots, and streets. In the late twentieth century, legislation protecting sites, particularly those on public land, was passed but little thought was given toward native sites and the record of the past in earlier periods.

Prehistoric sites on the Oregon coast have suffered from natural threats. The Oregon coast has long been subject to wind and wave erosion, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other geologic processes that have rearranged the coastline. A primary goal of geo‐archaeological studies is to gather evidence of forces that have affected the landscape, when these events occurred, and how human populations have adapted to them.

Analytical requirements To determine the status of animals along Oregon’s coast, data from many sites are required. Furthermore, sites need to represent different types of settlements such as seasonal and year‐round, bluff‐top, riverside and river mouth. Large village sites that were occupied year‐round and over time are especially valuable because a large block of sediment from a site, not just a few holes, must be excavated and analyzed to visualize the full range of activities there. Ideally the excavation should include at least 100 cubic meters (Lyman 1991:62). For putting fauna and artifacts into a social and ecological context, archaeological assemblages must be compared with studies of native use of resources that have been based on ethnohistoric and ethnographic data. Recent decades of archaeological work have provided many Oregon coastal sites that meet these criteria (Appendix).

Methods of analyzing and interpreting faunal remains recovered from middens have been the subject of considerable discussion (Grayson 1984; Hall 2001; Lyman 1991). To interpret cast‐off remnants and to reconstruct past environments, an investigator must know the geo‐archaeological setting of the midden and then interpret cultural artifacts and faunal remains uncovered there. One may assume a site’s faunal assemblage represents all – or at least almost all – parts of the local ecosystem. This assumption has two parts: 1) that native people used almost every natural resource in the environment for one purpose or another, if not for food, then for tools, clothing, shelter or rituals; and 2) that remnants of most materials, such as faunal remains and tools, were preserved in the midden. The first assumption is based on oral histories and ethnographic observations, along with studies of faunal material retrieved archaeologically. Studies and comparisons addressing and confirming this first assumption have been positive, and are ongoing.

Exceptions to the second assumption are that animals almost lacking in preservable remnants, such as lamprey eels, will be under‐represented, and, more generally, plant

12 Ecological Baselines materials will not be preserved unless special conditions create anaerobic burial. Occasionally, however, such special conditions have existed and analysis of those sites has informed our understanding of others. The Ozette site on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula preserved plant materials because a major landslide several centuries ago, likely triggered by the most recent major subduction earthquake on the Pacific coast, buried much of the village and thus created anaerobic conditions conducive to preservation (Samuels 1991). Analysis of plant remains used in structures and as tools at Ozette helps us to understand the lifeways and plant resources of other coastal peoples.

The physical environment in the Late Holocene Sea level and sea coast Although sea level has been relatively stable for 6,000 years, the Oregon coast has been affected by many geophysical forces re‐shaping the coastline. Fauna and soils in sites can help researchers identify geological structures of past habitats. For example, coastal‐ edge faunal remnants in archaeological sites near Seaside (35‐CLT‐13 and 47, dating from ~3650 to 1000 BP; Connolly 1992) and near Takhenitch Lake (35‐DO‐130 and 175, dating from ~8,000 to 3,000 BP; Minor and Toepel 1986) indicate that these sites formerly were at the edge of the sea rather than slightly inland as they now are (Map, left). Some former coastal‐edge sites now lie buried by sediments or by sea.

Earthquakes and tsunamis Geological data published in the last 25 years give evidence that the Oregon coast is subject to periodic subduction earthquakes often accompanied by tsunamis, and archaeological data confirm repeated impacts on human communities (Atwater 1987; Woodward, White, and Cummings 1990). During the past 3,000 years, human settlements at the mouth of the Coquille River (the Old‐town Bandon site of Nah‐so‐ mah Village, 35‐CS‐43) flourished because the site offered access to land, sea, and estuary resources, but the earliest of these are buried beneath sand layers. Geological analyses indicate a pattern of subsidence followed by uplift and eventual resettlement (Hall and Radosevich 1995). During the gold rush of the 1850s, 150 years after the most recent major subduction earthquake, native people lived in three settlements along the estuary, a kilometer and a half to five kilometers upriver from an earlier village near the river’s mouth. Historic reconstruction along the lower Coquille River confirms that uplift was underway during the Euro‐American settlement period (Benner 1991). What was Ecological Baselines 13

described in 1826 as a bay became today’s Coquille marsh (Davies 1961). Had European settlement not intervened, another village likely would have developed at the Nah‐so‐ mah village site but instead, a ferry service, based on a small boat, was established there in the 1850s. In the following decades, a thriving port grew up to ship lumber out and bring goods in. The city of Bandon formed in the1880s; businesses along the river dumped refuse in the river; and a jetty resulted in sand deposition that extended on the south side of the jetty, out into the ocean (Vogel 1992, 1995).

Human populations Native people significantly influenced the coastal ecosystem during the entire Holocene, but likely their impacts intensified with population increases over the past few thousand years. Influxes included the migration of Athapascan speaking people sometime during the last millennium. Prior to European contact, small but stable settlements were clustered around estuaries of rivers that offer land and marine resources plus water for domestic use and a river for travel. Rather than simply living off what the land produced, natives significantly shaped resources, for example by burning forests to encourage deer and camas and by manipulating coastal streams. Byram’s (2002) study of fish traps and brush fences on these waterways suggests ways in which structures altered the environment, improved the fishing habitat, and increased the catch. Enhancement of already abundant resources would have supported increases in the size of settlements.

Studies farther north on the Pacific coast supplement Oregon studies by describing how natives shaped the landscape. For example, management of coastal and estuary plants has been documented in British Columbia, which had very large coastal villages at the time of European contact (Deur and Turner 2005). In Alaska, Langdon (2006) documented how Tlingit people organized their harvest of salmon to assure that some returning salmon would survive to spawn and thus assure continuing harvests. Furthermore, the Tlingit embedded their resource practices in their daily life; for them the spiritual and cultural practices were one. It is likely that similar practices occurred in Oregon.

Temperature patterns Shellfish excavated from middens provide insights about past environmental conditions. As they grow, molluscs incorporate into their shells isotopes of oxygen from the water, and the ratio of isotopes 18O to 16O varies with temperature. These ratios in molluscs from archaeological sites offer a method to determine past sea surface temperature (SST). I tested archaeologically recovered shells of the sea mussel Mytilus californianus, a relatively long‐lived coastal‐edge mollusc found in most Oregon shell middens, from the five Oregon archaeological sites shown on the map: Whale Cove, 35‐LNC‐60 (Lyman 1991); Seal Rock, 35‐LNC‐14 (Lyman 1991); Neptune State Park, 35‐LA‐3 (Barner 1982); Bullards, 35‐CS‐3 (Roth and Hall 1996); and Nah‐so‐mah, 35‐CS‐43 (Hall 1995). Estimated SST at Whale Cove and Bandon, which yielded specimens from multiple strata dating from strata 250 to 3,000 years ago, showed little change during the late Holocene (Hall, Roy, and Yamada 2007). These data suggest that Oregon SST did not vary appreciably during the late Holocene and support the conclusion reached by Mann et al. (2009) that the Pacific Northwest did not experience a warming trend during Europe’s medieval warming period (900 to 1300 A.D.).

14 Ecological Baselines

In addition to obtaining estimates of past environmental conditions, the ratio of isotopic values varies within an individual specimen that survives through several seasons and thus can be used to examine whether SST variations, likely due to El Niño cycles common today, occurred in the past. To check this we compared within‐shell variation in SST estimates from archaeological and contemporary mussels with inter‐annual variation in actual sea water temperature data collected at the University of Oregon’s Institute of Marine Biology in Charleston, Oregon. The patterns were congruent with El Niño episodes (Hall, Roy, and Yamada 2007).

Resource extraction Trading among American Indian tribes occurred both along the coast and between coastal and inland areas, but the type and scale differed from commercial resource extraction introduced by Europeans and Americans. Among native traded items were elk hides for shelter and clothing, obsidian for tools, sea otter pelts for warmth and status, abalone shell for jewelry, and dentalium tusks for currency. By the mid‐eighteenth century, European commercial activity often involved intense competition that tended to drive some resources to extinction or near‐extinction. Extreme examples of non‐sustainable practices were trade in beaver, sea otter and fur seal pelts. In addition to between‐nation competition for furs, drivers of non‐sustainable practices were new technologies to preserve and transport food, such as fish canneries, freezing, and ultimately air‐lifting fish to distant markets.

Animals resident on the Oregon coast before 1750 Archaeological deposits in Oregon coastal sites testify to the presence of many resident species of molluscs, mammals, birds, and fish. These provided people with food and materials to make tools, clothing, weapons and homes. Land mammals and plants also were important in native economies. This balanced approach to resources likely offered resilience during environmental fluctuations over extended periods. Because our focus in this report is coastal resources, faunal remains are listed by four groups: sea mammals, invertebrates, birds, and fish.

Sea mammals (Appendix, Table 1) The presence of sea otter (Enhydra lutris), often as the second or third most common sea mammal in most coastal sites, suggests it was relatively abundant along the Oregon coast before 1750. Other sea mammals identified in most sites are the Steller sea lion (Eumatopias jubata), harbor seal (Phoca vitulina), and the California sea lion (Zalophus californianus). Less common but present at many sites are the northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus), the harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) and the northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris). Individuals of all ages, including newborns, of both the northern fur seal and the sea otter, are found in many sites, providing evidence that these two species that were devastated by commercial hunting in the nineteenth century at one time were year‐round residents (Lyman 1991: 169). Killed for their fur, neither now breeds on the Oregon coast. Remnants of whale (Cetacea sp.) are common. Natives living on the northern coasts of Washington and California are known to have hunted whales but whether Oregon’s native people did is less certain. In any case, nineteenth century observations report that when whales beached, their remains were valued by Oregon natives for food as well as for whale‐bone tools (Williams 1878; Hall 1995). Ecological Baselines 15

Invertebrates (Appendix, Table 2) Diverse invertebrates living along rocky beaches, or in estuaries, intertidal and sub‐ tidal zones, appear in archaeological sites. Some represent food items and others were raw materials for tools such as shell scrapers or ornaments. Still other molluscs are considered to have “hitch‐hiked” into sites because they are found attached to shells of prey species. All the major sub‐categories – bivalves, snails, chitons, echinoderms, tusk or tooth shells, and barnacles – are present and even species such as sea urchins and crabs that have few parts that preserve. Among bivalves, the hard shell of the ubiquitous sea mussel (Mytilus californianus) and its large size contribute to its high numbers particularly in sites bordering a rocky seacoast, with various clams being more abundant along estuaries.

Birds (Appendix, Table 3) Bird species help to characterize ecological features of habitats such as estuaries that have been in a constant cycle of change, due to physical and anthropogenic forces. As noted previously, repeated subduction earthquakes have produced subsidence followed by periods of uplift at many estuaries, the most recent subsidence event occurring January 26, 1700. Other forces have produced more localized but dramatic physical changes. Thus, at a single site over time, the ratio of dabbling ducks that live in shallow water to diving ducks that are found in deeper areas and off shore indicate such habitat changes.

Birds are well represented in archaeological sites because of their importance in native economies (for example, eggs and meat were staples, while bones and feathers became tools and ornaments). Birds common in sites near estuaries represent a mix of habitats including forests, (e.g., grouse, woodpeckers, crows (Dendragapus sp., Dryocopus sp., and Corvus sp.); estuaries, e.g., dabbling ducks, (Anas sp. – e.g., wigeons, Northern pintails, mallards, and green‐winged teals), bay ducks (Aythya sp.), geese (Branta sp.), cormorants (Phalacrocorax sp.); and ocean species, e.g., gulls (Larus sp.), the common murre (Uria aalge), sea ducks (scoters, Melanitta sp.), and even Diomedea sp. Albatross bones, used for tools, probably owe their presence in sites by being salvaged when found dead on beaches.

Fish (Appendix, Table 4) All native coastal communities relied upon fish for a significant part of their diet. A substantial record of detailed fish analyses indicate that large fish such as salmon as well as small fish such as herring are well represented. Bones of salmon (Oncorhynchus sp.), Pacific herring (Clupea palasi), and various rockfish (Sebastes sp.) are numerous in faunal collections. By contrast, Pacific lamprey (Lampetra tridentata), known from ethnographic and oral history reports to have been very common along Oregon’s coast and much loved by native people, have few hard parts and are almost invisible archaeologically. Fortunately, ethnographic studies and contemporary oral histories are available to reveal the presence and importance of lamprey.

Working in coastal environments far north of Oregon, Langdon (2006) saw remains of prehistoric intertidal stone walls that puzzled him. Putting these together with Tlingit oral histories and written notes of earlier travelers he concluded that these represented weirs constructed at a height to allow fish to pass over at high tide but detain some of the returning salmon during mid‐tides. This provided abundant food while preventing over‐ fishing; it thereby assured continuation of the species. In Oregon, Byram (2002)

16 Ecological Baselines reconstructed past intertidal fishing practices with oral histories, ethnohistoric documents, and archaeological remains. He found that native people valued a variety of species, including small fish like herring, smelt and sardines, along with salmon, flounder, halibut and sculpin, the species varying by estuary system:

Twentieth century industrial impacts have severely reduced estuary fish populations, but diverse fish species were once the foundation of coastal economies. These included large runs of salmon and forage fish during all seasons, and other pelagic and demersal fishes that were resident throughout the year (Byram 2002:82).

Human population size Archaeological studies confirm that estuaries where people have access to resources such as birds, shellfish, drinking water, and sea mammals have consistently been places of highest population density along the coast. Because Oregon’s estuary systems are less extensive than the glacially‐created fjords of British Columbia, however, native people did not attain the population density or cultural complexity of the northern part of the Northwest coast. Estimating the size of human population on the Oregon coast prior to European impacts is difficult because introduced diseases preceded the arrival of observers such as traders and settlers in most areas. Devastating infectious diseases including smallpox, malaria and measles reduced the size and changed the nature and placement of settlements (Boyd 1990). A Hudson Bay expedition to the central and southern coast in 1826‐7, led by Alexander McLeod, offers some insights into native life (Davies 1961). This journal reports abandoned settlements, supporting the hypothesis that some depopulation impacts due to epidemics had occurred prior to 1826.

Invasive species and native species extinctions The full story of the introduction of exotic and invasive species has yet to be uncovered. Byram (2002) discusses some impacts of American shad and striped bass, introduced in the late 1800s. It is likely that every introduced species produces an impact on native species, even though it may be difficult to measure and even more difficult to counteract if the new species finds a niche that meets its needs.

The relatively recent introduction of the aggressive green crab (Carcinus maenas) was not intentional. By contrast, among molluscs, the Eastern soft‐shell clam (Mya arenaria) and the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) were brought to Oregon for commercial purposes, the former in the mid‐nineteenth century and the latter in the early twentieth. Some published accounts credit the arrival of the Eastern soft‐shell clam Mya arenaria on Oregon shores to dispersal from an earlier introduction in San Francisco Bay (Morris et al. 1980). Interviews with descendants of Europeans who settled on the coast in the mid nineteenth century, however, suggest that the clam had more direct help in Oregon. John Hamblock, a German immigrant who settled near the mouth of the Coquille River, obtained spats of the clam from shipbuilder and lumberman (presumably Asa) Simpson in North Bend. Asa Simpson, born in 1824, came to the North Bend and Marshfield area (later known as Coos Bay) in the late 1850s. According to his descendants, Hamblock planted the spats on tidal land on the south side of the Coquille River, probably in the 1860s (Howard Bullard, personal communication, Sept. 21, 1990). In addition to introductions in Coos Bay Ecological Baselines 17 and the Coquille estuary, the clam may have been introduced elsewhere on the Oregon coast.

During the nineteenth century, Euro‐American immigrants over‐harvested the native oyster (Ostrea lurida) and they introduced the Pacific oyster in the early twentieth century as a replacement. Because of its larger size and greater range of temperature tolerances, it continues as a major commercial crop but has established itself independently in some areas (Sylvia Yamada, personal communication, June, 2011). Not extinct, the native oyster is the subject of restoration efforts in Oregon and in Washington for cultural, ecological and commercial purposes.

The Northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus), present but much less common than the sea otter in Oregon middens, was commercially hunted for its fur and no longer breeds along the Oregon coast (Lyman 1988). Other sea mammals such as the California and Steller sea lions declined during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Mate 1973). Likely, urban developments along the coast affected the location of some rookeries, but Lyman (1988:260‐261), discussing the “apparent continuity of Oregon coast use by all pinniped taxa and the sea otter” over the 3,000 years prior to European impacts, said that “the most parsimonious explanation” of reductions in pinnipeds and the sea otter in the past century is commercial exploitation.

Extinctions of keystone species disrupt the entire ecosystem (Estes et al. 2011). Restorations may be ecologically possible, but may be opposed by interest groups that harvest the species’ prey. For example, in 1750, the sea otter (Enhydra lutris) was a relatively common resident on the Oregon coast but the last known resident sea otter was killed in 1906 at Otter Rock (Kenyon 1969). Large‐scale commercial exploitation of the sea otter began with Vitus Bering’s explorations in the eighteenth century and continued with Russian, Spanish, French, English and American traders. There were still sea otters present when William Wells, an Eastern writer who traveled on the Oregon coast, arrived in 1855‐ 56. His description of a sea otter hunt near Coos Bay shows the hunters’ admiration and yet callousness for them. Wells and his companion killed two adults frolicking with their young, and reported that sea otter pelts brought $35.00 each in San Francisco (Wells 1856).

None of the 93 otters transplanted from Amchitka Island in the Aleutian chain in 1970 and 1971 at Cape Arago and Port Orford established permanent populations; the number of countable animals declined over 10 subsequent years, and eventually became zero (Jameson 1982). Recent newspaper articles (Oregonian 2009) and various individuals have reported sightings but so far as is known, no otter communities have been established. In areas where sea otters have been restored, the fishery has improved (Estes et al. 2011).

Estuaries, past and present: degradation and restoration Using archives, ethnographies, and archaeological studies, Tveskov (2000) described the importance to native settlements of estuaries where saltwater, marine organisms and fresh‐water organisms mix among “complicated fans of tidal channels, mud flats and colonies of eel grass (Zostera sp.).” Natives modified streams and estuaries by constructing fish traps designed to facilitate their fishing technologies, but unlike more recent modifications, those made by indigenous people were made to increase productivity and to aid them in their catch but not for other commercial purposes (Byram 2002). The

18 Ecological Baselines degradation of estuary habitat by logging, shipping, introduced livestock, and river diking from about 1850 onwards clearly affected the ability of estuaries to produce and nourish plankton, eel grass, and algae that are fundamental to survival of fish that spawn there. The questions now are, can restoration be done, and can restorations work?

The example of the Salmon River estuary on Oregon’s north coast says that it can and does (Paul Hoobyar 2007). Much of that estuary had been diked from the mid‐nineteenth to mid‐twentieth century to expand agricultural land. Following passage of an Act of Congress in 1974 that designated the 9,670‐acre Cascade Head Scenic Research Area, restoration of wetlands began. Three dike‐removal projects occurred, the first in 1978, the second in 1987, and the third in 1996. Biologists from several state and federal agencies examined the impacts. Their findings showed recovery of wetland plant communities and their positive effects on young salmon of the same species (Hoobyar 2007). With an expanded estuary in which mixing of fresh and saltwater occurred, groups of young fish were found to adapt differentially to slightly different habitats. These varied conditions in the estuary provided each species a buffer against environmental changes occurring in their environment, a pattern of differential adaptability that is termed resilience. Hoobyar (2007) explains the evolution of salmon’s ability to vary according to the conditions under which rearing occurs. This flexibility can be considered an adaptation to environmental conditions that ancestral salmon experienced as they evolved over the millennia to become anadromous in a dynamic river‐coast system.

A more recent example of dike removal and tidal wetland restoration is underway on the Coquille River. As in other coastal areas, settlers altered the habitat of the lower Coquille by introducing exotic plants and animals and by diking to provide pasture for dairy cattle. At the mouth of the Coquille, river banks were fortified and the river was channelized to prevent it from changing course as the town of Bandon developed (Vogel 1992). The addition of jetties in the late 1800s caused the accretion of sand, especially along the southern side, and further altered the character of the land and the estuary (Hall and Hall 1995). The result is that over the past 150 years, the Coquille estuary’s size and productivity have declined about 95% (Roy Lowe, personal communication, May 2011). In response, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service developed Ni‐les’tun Tidal Marsh Restoration Project. Over a several year period, the service purchased land from willing buyers and began the process of removing dikes. Archaeological work performed in conjunction with the Coquille Indian Tribe identified numerous archaeological sites and fish weir sites there. Among the many parts of this complex restoration effort were: obliterating 15 miles of ditches and relocating coho and cutthroat trout from ditches; construction of 5 miles of sinuous channels; installation of large woody debris; relocation of a road on the north bank of the river; and planting of trees and shrubs in former cranberry bogs. In August, 2011, more than 400 acres of tideland were added. Updates on the project are posted on the website: http://www.fws.gov/oregoncoast/bandonmarsh/restoration/index.cfm. Continued study of the Coquille estuary should lead to an increased understanding of the process of restoration and yield additional lessons that can be applied elsewhere along the Oregon coast. Ecological Baselines 19

Conclusions What does a review of the animals that lived along coast in prehistoric times offer that can help us cope with ecological problems we face in the twenty‐first century? We know we cannot return to prehistoric conditions, nor can we re‐establish the behaviors and lifestyles that maintained those resources. Still, there is much to learn and much that can be applied. It is useful to know which species had adapted to Oregon’s estuaries and coast, and useful to consider them as a group, an integrated ecological system, and learn how their interactions supported each other and were supported by human communities. It is comforting to know that earlier cultures coped with this variable environment by making modifications that enhanced the resources and prevented their over‐use and depletion.

Ethnographies of coastal native people, along with faunal analyses at coastal village sites, confirm that land resources, e.g., bones of deer and elk, are as numerous as are marine resources, suggesting that native economies were diverse, not focused on only one industry, one resource, or one type of resource. Although coastal people traded with inland people for items such as obsidian not available locally, local resources provided most of the food. Small, ubiquitous resources such as shellfish and herring were valued along with larger, so‐called charismatic animals such as salmon. Rather than considering streams simply as a means to float logs to market, people recognized the importance of streams and estuaries in maintaining resources on which they depended.

Philosophically, we must admire the examples set by native resource use and welcome the knowledge and care that contemporary tribes provide. It is likely that native management style developed over the years, perhaps on the basis of trial and error, as part of a process of adapting to the environment and understanding and respecting their dependence upon it. Contemporary cultures would be wise to respect their views and their descendants, and be willing to learn from their experience. Finally, the importance of healthy ecosystems to healthy coastal resources cannot be overstated. Restoration has been shown to work in Oregon and elsewhere, and knowledge of the environment and the resources of the past play an important role.

Acknowledgments I thank Mike Graybill, director of the South Slough Estuarine Sanctuary, for providing contemporary mussel samples from Lighthouse Beach and Bandon Beach and Alan Mix for access to the OSU Isotopic Laboratory and for suggestions on analysis of the isotopic data. Also, I acknowledge with gratitude temperature and salinity data provided by Aleta Carte and Barbara Butler of the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology. I am indebted to all those who have worked to produce the existing ethnographic and archaeological data and to insights offered by mollusc zoologist Sylvia Yamada and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Biologist Roy Lowe. For many years, and many kindnesses, I appreciate the friendship with members of the Coquille Indian tribe and the opportunity to work side by side with them since 1976, the support that OSU Sea Grant has extended, and the help and technical skills of Don Alan Hall.

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References Atwater, Brian F. (1987) Evidence for Great Holocene Earthquakes along the Outer Coast of Washington State. Science 236: 942‐944. Barner, Debra C. (1982) Shell and Archaeology: An Analysis of Shellfish Procurement and Utilization on the Central Oregon Coast. M. A.I.S. Thesis, Oregon State University, Corvallis. Benner, Patricia (1991) Historical Reconstruction of the Coquille River and Surrounding Landscape. In: Near Coastal Water Pilot Project Report, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Portland. Boyd, Robert T. 1990 Demographic History, 1774‐1874. In: Handbook of North American Indians, Northwest Coast, vol. 7, edited by Wayne Suttles, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., pp. 135‐148. Byram, Robert Scott (2002) Brush fences and basket traps: the archaeology and ethnohistory of tidewater weir fishing on the Oregon coast. Doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon. Connolly, Thomas J. (1992) Human Responses to Change in Coastal Geomorphology and Fauna on the Southern Northwest Coast: Archaeological Investigations at Seaside, Oregon. University of Oregon Anthropological Papers 45, Department of Anthropology and Oregon State Museum of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon. [With contributions by Ruth L. Greenspan, Mark E. Darienzo, Debra Barner, Susan Crockford, Richard E. Hughes, Patricia F. McDowell, and Nancy Stenholm] Davies, K.G., editor (1961) Peter Skene Ogden's Snake Country Journal, 1826‐27. Publications of the Hudson's Bay Society No. 23. London. Davis, Loren G., Michele Punke, Roberta Hall, Matthew Filmore, and Samuel C. Willis (2004) Evidence for Late Pleistocene Occupation on the Southern Northwest Coast. Journal of Field Archeology 29: 1‐ 10. Deur, Douglas and Nancy J. Turner, editors (2005) Keeping it Living: traditions of plant use and cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America. University of Washington Press, Seattle, and UBC Press, Vancouver. Estes, James A. et al. (2011) Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth. Science 333: 301‐306. Grayson, Donald Kenneth (1984) Quantitative Zooarchaeology. Academic Press, Seattle. Hall, Roberta L., editor (1995) People of the Coquille Estuary. Words & Pictures Unlimited, Corvallis, Oregon. Hall, Roberta L. (2000) The Earthquake Hypothesis Applied to the Coquille: Beginnings. In: Changing Landscapes: Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Coquille Cultural Preservation Conference, 1999, edited by Robert J. Losey. Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon, pp. 33‐42. Hall, Roberta L. (2001) Nah‐So‐Mah Village, Viewed Through Its Fauna. Report to the Coquille Indian Tribe and OSU Sea Grant, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon. Hall, Roberta L. (2002) Resource Traditions. In: Changing Landscapes; Proceedings of the 5th and 6th Coquille Cultural Preservation Conferences, edited by Donald B. Ivy and R. Scott Byram. Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon, pp. 99‐120. Hall, Roberta L. and Don Alan Hall (1995) Changes. In: Hall, Roberta L., People of the Coquille Estuary. Words & Pictures Unlimited, Corvallis, Oregon, pp. 81‐90. Hall, Roberta L., and Stefan Radosevich (1995) Geoarchaeological Analysis of a Site in the Cascadia Subduction Zone on the Southern Oregon Coast. Northwest Archaeological Research Notes 29: 123‐ 140. Ecological Baselines 21

Hall, Roberta, Diana Roy, and David Boling (2004) Pleistocene Migration Routes into the Americas: Human Biological Adaptations and Environmental Constraints. Evolutionary Anthropology 13(4): 132‐144. Hall, Roberta, Diana Roy, and Sylvia Yamada (2007) Testing the Use of Sea Mussel 18Oxygen Isotopes from Archaeological Specimens to Infer Past Sea Surface Temperatures. Report to Oregon Sea Grant. Hoobyar, Paul (2007) Vital Linkages Learned at Salmon River. Oregon Sea Grant, ORESU‐G‐07‐003. Jackson, Jeremy B. C., et al. (2001) Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems. Science, New Series 293: 629‐638. Jameson, Ronald J., Karl W. Kenyon, Ancel M. Johnson, and Howard M. Wight (1982) History and Status of Translocated Sea Otter Populations in North America. Wildlife Society Bulletin 10: 100‐107. Kenyon, K.W. (1969) The Sea Otter in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. North American Fauna Number 68, United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife. Langdon, Steve J. (2006) Tidal Pulse Fishing. In: Menzies, Charles R., editor, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, pp. 21‐46. Larson, S, R. Jameson, M. Etnier, T. Jones, R. Hall (2012) Genetic Diversity and Population Parameters of Sea Otters, Enhydra lutris, before Fur Trade Extirpation from 1741‐1911. PLoS ONE : e32205. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032205 Lindsay, Lee W. Jr. (1995) Native Use of Resources on the Oregon Coast. In: People of the Coquille Estuary, edited by Roberta L. Hall. Words & Pictures Unlimited, Corvallis, Oregon, pp. 181‐210. Lotze, Heike K., et al. (2006) Depletion, Degradation, and Recovery Potential of Estuaries and Coastal Seas. Science, New Series 312: 1806‐1809. Lyman, R. Lee (1988) Zoogeography of Oregon Coast Marine Mammals: the Last 3,000 Years. Marine Mammal Science 4(3): 247–264. Lyman, R. Lee (1991) Prehistory of the Oregon Coast. Academic Press, San Diego. Lyman, R. Lee (1994) Vertebrate Taphonomy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Mann, Michael E., Zhihua Zhang, Scott Rutherford, Raymond S. Bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, Drew Shindell, Caspar Amman, Greg Faluvegi, and Fenbiao Ni (2009) Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly. Science vol. 324: 1256‐60. Mate, Bruce Reed (1973) Population Kinetics and Related Ecology of the Northern Sea Lion, Eumetopias Jubatus, and the California Sea Lion, Zalophus Californianus, along the Oregon Coast. Ph.d. Thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene. Menzies, Charles R., editor (2006) Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Minor, Rick and Kathryn A. Toepel (1986) The Archaeology of the Tahkenitch Landing Site: Early Prehistoric Occupation on the Oregon Coast. Heritage Research Associates, Report No. 46. Siuslaw National Forest. Morris, R.H., D. P. Abbott, and E.C. Haderlie (1980) Intertidal Invertebrates of California, Stanford University Press, Stanford. Notzke, Claudia (1994) Aboriginal Peoples and Natural Resources in Canada. Captus University Publications, North York, Ontario, Canada. The Oregonian, articles Feb. 20, 2009 p. B3 and March 23, 2009, p. A7 Roth, Barbara and Roberta L. Hall (1996) Archaeological Testing at Site 35CS43. Report to the Coquille Indian Tribe. On file at the Department of Anthropology, OSU, Corvallis.

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Samuels, Stephan R., editor (1991) Ozette Archaeological Project Research Reports, Volume I, House Structure and Floor Midden. Reports of Investigations 63. Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, and National Park Service, Pacific Northwest Regional Office, Seattle. Tveskov, Mark Axel (2000) The Coos and Coquille: A Northwest Coast Historical Anthropology. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oregon, Eugene. Vogel, Betty (1992) Early Commercial Development: Bandon, Oregon; Block 1 of the Averill Addition 1886‐1936. M.A.I.S. Thesis, Oregon State University, Corvallis. Vogel, Betty (1995) Commercial Development: Early History of Bandon. In: Hall, Roberta L., editor, People of the Coquille Estuary. Words & Pictures Unlimited, Corvallis, Oregon, pp. 91‐105. Wells, William (1856) Wildlife in Oregon. Harper's New Monthly Magazine 13(77): 588‐608. Williams, Lorin (1878) First Settlements in Southwestern Oregon. T'Vault's Expedition. MS P‐A 77, Bancroft Library, Berkeley. Woodward, J., J. White and R. Cummings (1990) Paleoseismicity and the Archaeological Record: Areas of Investigation on the Northern Oregon Coast. Oregon Geology 52: 57‐65.

Appendix: Resources, References and Tables Using archaeological materials to learn about the coastal environment and its fauna in the Holocene

Archaeological and ethnographic evidence shows – as if there were any doubt – that estuaries provided a rich and relatively stable resource base for native populations. Ethnographic interviews with native people and observations made by outsiders at the time that native people were first contacted support the view that native people were opportunistic in their choice of resources; almost all available resources were used for some purpose. Molluscs, a mainstay for people living along the coast, together with other refuse items comprised the shell middens. Because shell tends to change acidic coastal soils to slightly alkaline, they foster the preservation of bones and make shell middens excellent places to look for material with which to reconstruct the environment of the past. (Plant material, unfortunately, does not preserve well in middens.)

Published faunal analyses exist for many coastal sites but, as excavations vary greatly, some are detailed and others skimpy. Most sites have been dated using radiocarbon techniques, and a large majority date within the last 1,000 years. A few go back nearly to the end of the Pleistocene but the lowest levels lack shell middens since the coast line of the early Holocene is now under water.

Following are names and designations of many of the coastal sites that have provided information about fauna listed in this report but the list is not exhaustive. Sites are listed by county from Clatsop in the north to Curry in the south. Site numbering systems consist of a number of the state alphabetically (OR is 35, WA is 45, CA is 4, etc.); next is an abbreviation of the county in letters. Sites are numbered from the first to the most recent registered with the State Historic Preservation Office, irrespective of geographic location within the county. Ecological Baselines 23

This report also lists sources providing detailed information on these sites and other aspects of native lifeways, and four tables listing common fauna in each of four categories: sea mammals, invertebrates, birds, and fish.

Sites providing faunal data Clatsop County: 35CLT : 12 (A and B, in Ecola State Park), 13 (Avenue Q Site, on Highway 101), 16 (Young’s Bay, Astoria), 20 (Par tee ‐ on Seaside golf course; located on the east bank of the Necanicum River), 21 (A and B, Ecola State Park), 22 (Young’s Bay, Astoria), 33 (Eddy Point, ~5 km east of Astoria), 47 (Palmrose site, at confluence of Shangri La Creek and Hw. 26/101), 66 (on Highway 101, Clatsop County, Camp Rilea to Dellmoor Loop Road)

Tillamook County: 35TI: 1 (and TI1a; Netarts Spit sites), 47 (Oceanside)

Lincoln County: 35LNC: 14 (Seal Rock), 43 (Whale Cove Otter Crest Loop Section ofHw.101), 45 (Boiler Bay St. Park), 48 (Yachats Ocean Road), 49 and 50 (Yaquina Head), 55 and 56 (near Good Fortune Cove in the Cape Perpetua Scenic Area), 57 (Cape Creek Shell Midden, Cape Perpetua Scenic Area), 60 (Whale Cove), 62 (Yaquina Head), 63 (Yachats Ocean Road), 68 (Whale Cove Otter Crest Loop Section of Hw. 101), 92 (Whale Cove Otter Crest Loop Section ofHighway 101), 100 and 101 (Boiler Bay St. Park).

Lane County: 35LA: 3 (Neptune St. Park); 10 and 16 (both Bob’s Creek Wayside), 25 (Siuslaw Dune)

Douglas County: 35DO: 83 (Umpqua Eden), 130 and 175 (both Tahkenitch Landing)

Coos County: 35CS: 1 (Philpott site), 2 and 3 (Bullards Park, near river sites), 5 (the Sandspit Site in Bullards Park, studied as it was being eroded away by river action), CS17 (Cape Arago Slide), 24 (McCullough/Coos Bay Bridge site), 30 (Indian Bay on South Slough), 43 (Bandon village site), 62 (Whiskey Run), 136 (Coquille Point), 142 (Graveyard Pt. site), 173 (Cape Arago slide)

Curry County: 35CU: 2 (Cape Blanco), 7 (Tseriadun, near Garrison Lake), 9 (Port Orford St. Park), 35 (Port Orford; note: the state park is large and contains other sites, many as yet not designated), 37 (Lone Ranch), 47 (Strain site, 17 mi. N. of Port Orford), 59 (Tlegetlinten site), 61 (Pistol River), 62 (Myers Creek), 67 (Indian Sands, Boardman St. Park), 75 (Blacklock Point), 106 (Blundon site), 160 (Goat Island)

Bibliography

Selected reports from prehistoric coastal sites with faunal remains Barner, Debra Carol (1981) Shell and Archaeology: An Analysis of Shellfish Procurement and Utilization on the Central Oregon Coast. M.A.I.S. thesis, Oregon State University, Corvallis. Barner, Debra Carol (1987) Molluscan Remains. In: Archaeological Investigations at Yaquina Head, Central Oregon Coast, edited by Rick Minor, Kathryn Anne Toepel, and Ruth L. Greenspan. Heritage Research Associates Report No. 59, Eugene, Oregon, pp. 42 53.

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Benner, Patricia (1991) Historical Reconstruction of the Coquille River and Surrounding Landscape. In: Near Coastal Water Pilot Project Report, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Portland. Bennett, Ann C. (1988) Whale cove (35LNC60); An Archaeological Investigation on the Central Oregon Coast. Master’s Thesis, Oregon State University Corvallis. Berreman, Joel V. (1944) Chetco Archaeology. A Report on the Lone Ranch Creek Shell Mound on the Coast of Southern Oregon. General Series in Anthropology No. 11, Menasha, Wisconsin. Bovy, Kristine M. (2005) Effects of Human Hunting, Climate Change and Tectonic Events on Waterbirds along the Pacific Northwest Coast during the Late Holocene. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle. Boyd, Robert T. (1990) Demographic History, 1774‐1874. In: Handbook of North American Indians, Northwest Coast, vol. 7, edited by Wayne Suttles, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., pp. 135‐148. Byram, Robert Scott (1998) Fishing Weirs in Oregon Coast Estuaries. In Hidden Dimensions: The Cultural Significance of Wetland Archaeology. Edited by Kathryn Bernick; University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, pp. 199‐219. Byram, Robert Scott (2002) Brush fences and basket traps: the archaeology and ethnohistory of tidewater weir fishing on the Oregon coast. Doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon, Eugene. Cohen, Amie and Mark Tveskov (2008) The Tseriadun Site: Prehistoric and Historic Period Archaeology on the Southern Oregon Coast. SOULA Research Report 2008‐3. Ashland, Oregon. Connolly, Thomas J. (1992) Human Responses to Change in Coastal Geomorphology and Fauna on the Southern Northwest Coast: Archaeological Investigations at Seaside, Oregon. University of Oregon Anthropological Papers 45, Department of Anthropology and Oregon State Museum of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene. [With contributions by Ruth L. Greenspan, Mark E. Darienzo, Debra Barner, Susan Crockford, Richard E. Hughes, Patricia F. McDowell, and Nancy Stenholm] Connolly, Thomas J. and Guy L. Tasa (2004) Archaeological Evaluation of the Avenue Q Site (35CLT13), Oregon Coast Highway (US Highway 101), Clatsop County, Oregon. OSMA Report 2004‐6. Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon, Eugene. Deur, Douglas and Nancy J. Turner, editors (2005) Keeping it Living: traditions of plant use and cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America. University of Washington Press, Seattle, and UBC Press, Vancouver. Dicken, S.N. (1961) Some Recent Physical Changes on the Oregon Coast. Department of Geography, University of Oregon, Eugene. Draper, John Allen (1988) A Proposed Model of Late Prehistoric Settlement Systems on the Southern Northwest Coast, Coos and Curry Counties, Oregon. Ph.D. Dissertation, Washington State University, Pullman. Draper, John Allen (1980) An Analysis of Lithic Tools and Debitage from 35CS1: A Prehistoric Site on the Southern Oregon Coast. Master’s Thesis, Oregon State University, Corvallis. Ecological Baselines 25

Erlandson, Jon M., Mark A. Tveskov and R. Scott Byram (1998) The Development of Maritime Adaptations on the Southern Northwest Coast of North America. Arctic Anthropology 35(1): 6‐22. Gard, Howard A. (1990) The Role of Southern Oregon’s Coastal Islands in Prehistoric Subsistence. Master’s Thesis, Oregon State University, Corvallis. Grayson, Donald Kenneth (1984) Quantitative Zooarchaeology. Academic Press, Seattle. Greenspan, Ruth L., and Rebecca J. Wigen (1987) Vertebrate Faunal Remains. In: Archaeological Investigations at Yaquina Head, Central Oregon Coast, by Rick Minor, Kathryn Anne Toepel, and Ruth L. Greenspan. Heritage Research Associates Report No. 59, Eugene, Oregon, pp. 54‐66. Hall, Don Alan and Roberta L. Hall (1991) Bustards on the Southern Oregon Coast? Oregon Birds 17(4): 112. Hall, Don Alan and Roberta L. Hall (1993) What were McLeod’s “Bustards”? Oregon Birds 19(2): 39. Hall, Roberta L., editor (1995) People of the Coquille Estuary. Words & Pictures Unlimited, Corvallis, Oregon. Hall, Roberta L., (2000) The Earthquake Hypothesis Applied to the Coquille: Beginnings. In: Changing Landscapes: Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Coquille Cultural Preservation Conference, 1999, edited by Robert J. Losey. Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon, pp. 33‐42. Hall, Roberta L., (2001) Nah So Mah Village, Viewed Through Its Fauna. Report to the Coquille Indian Tribe and OSU Sea Grant, Oregon State University, Corvallis. Hall, Roberta L., (2001) Bone Salvaged from 35 CS 43, June and July, 2001. Report to the Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon. Hall, Roberta L., (2002) Resource Traditions. In: Changing Landscapes; Proceedings of the 5th and 6th Coquille Cultural Preservation Conferences, edited by Donald B. Ivy and R. Scott Byram. Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon, pp. 99‐120. Hall, Roberta, Lee Lindsay and Betty Vogel (1990) Southern Oregon Prehistory: Excavations at 35CS43, Bandon, Oregon. Pacific Coast Archaeological Society Quarterly 26(1): 60‐79. Hall, Roberta L., and Stefan Radosevich (1995a) Episodic Flooding of Prehistoric Settlements at the Mouth of the Coquille River. Oregon Geology 57: 18‐22. Hall, Roberta L., and Stefan Radosevich (1995b) Geoarchaeological Analysis of a Site in the Cascadia Subduction Zone on the Southern Oregon Coast. Northwest Archaeological Research Notes 29: 123‐140. Harrington, John P. (1942) Notes of Interviews with Alsea, Siuslaw, and Coos Informants. John Peabody Harrington Papers, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Microfilm Reel 021‐024; Interviews with Southwest Oregon Athapaskan Informants; Microfilm Reel 025‐027; National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Hatch, Dave (2001) Elakha. Jan. 4, 2001 posting on website: Tidepool.org/features/hatch.otters.cfm; Talk given at dedication of “Elakha/Sea Otter” research vessel, OSU.

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Hatch, Dave (2002) Elakha: Sea Otters, Native People, and European Colonization in the North Pacific. In: Changing Landscapes; Proceedings of the 5th and 6th Coquille Cultural Preservation Conferences, edited by Donald B. Ivy and R. Scott Byram. Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon, pp. 79‐88. Ivy, Donald B. and R. Scott Byram (2002) Changing Landscapes: Sustaining Traditions. Proceedings of the 5th and 6th Coquille Cultural Preservation Conference. Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon. Kreag, Rebecca A. (1979) Natural Resources of Coquille Estuary. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Salem. Lindsay, Lee W. Jr. (1990) Development of a Bone Artifact Typology for the Oregon Coast.Master’s thesis, Oregon State University, Corvallis. Lindsay, Lee W. Jr. (1995) Native Use of Resources on the Oregon Coast. In: People of the Coquille Estuary, edited by R. L. Hall, Words & Pictures Unlimited, Corvallis, Oregon, pp. 190‐210. Lindsay, Lee W. Jr., and Anthony R. Keith (1986) Faunal Remains and Artifacts from Bandon, Oregon, Site 35CS43C. Northwest Anthropological Research Notes 20(2):149‐161. Losey, Robert J. (1996) Fishing on the Coquille River: A Zooarchaeological Perspective. Master’s Thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene. Losey, Robert J., editor (2000) Changing Landscapes. Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Coquille Cultural Preservation Conference, 1999. Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon. Lyman, R. Lee (1988) Zoogeography of Oregon Coast Marine Mammals: The Last 3,000 Years. Marine Mammal Science 4(3): 247‐264. Lyman, R. Lee (1991) Prehistory of the Oregon Coast: The Effects of Excavation Strategies and Assemblage Size on Archaeological Inquiry. Academic Press, San Diego. Lyman, R. Lee (1996) Applied Zooarchaeology: the Relevance of Faunal Analysis to Wildlife Management. World Archaeology 28(1): 110‐125. Lyman, R. Lee, Linda A. Clark and Richard E. Ross (1988) Harpoon Stone Tips and Sea Mammal Hunting on the Oregon and Northern California Coasts. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 10(1): 73‐87. Mills, Elaine L., editor (1981) The Papers of John Peabody Harrington in the Smithsonian Institution 1907 1958. Vol. 1. Klaus International Publications, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Minor, Rick (1986) An Evaluation of Archaeological Sites on State Park Lands along the Oregon Coast. Heritage Research Associates, Report No. 44. Oregon State Historic Preservation Office, Salem. Minor, Rick (with contributions by Debra C. Barner, Ruth L. Greenspan, Rebecca J. Wigen) (1991) Yaquina Head: A Middle Archaic Settlement on the North Central Oregon Coast. Heritage Research Associates, Report No. 100. Bureau of Land Management, Salem District. Minor, Rick and Ruth L. Greenspan (1995) Archaeology of the Cape Creek Shell Midden, Cape Perpetua Scenic, Area, Central Oregon Coast. Siuslaw National Forest. Coastal Prehistory Program. Oregon State Museum of Anthropology, Eugene. Ecological Baselines 27

Minor, Rick and Ruth L. Greenspan (1998) Archaeological Test at the Cape Blanco Lighthouse Shell Midden, Southern Oregon Coast. Coos Bay District, Bureau of Land Management Report Number 216. Minor, Rick, Ruth L. Greenspan, Richard E. Hughes, and Guy L. Tasa (2000) The Siuslaw Dune Site: Archaeology and Environmental Change in the Oregon Dunes. In: Changing Landscapes: Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Coquille Cultural Preservation Conference, 1999, edited by Robert J. Losey. Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon, pp. 82‐102. Minor, Rick and Kathryn A. Toepel (1986) The Archaeology of the Tahkenitch Landing Site: Early Prehistoric Occupation on the Oregon Coast. Heritage Research Associates, Report No. 46. Siuslaw National Forest. Minor, Rick, Kathryn Anne Toepel, Ruth L. Greenspan, and Debra C. Barner (1985) Archaeological Investigations in the Cape Perpetua Scenic Area, Central Oregon Coast. Heritage Research Associates, Report No. 40. Siuslaw National Forest. O’Neill, Brian L., Jenna E. Peterson, Guy L. Tasa, Todd J. Braje, and Thomas J. Connolly (2006) Archaeological Investigations at the McCullough (Coos Bay) Bridge Site (35CS24), Coos County, Oregon. OSMA Report 2006‐160. Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon, Eugene. Ross, Richard E., and Sandra L. Snyder (1986) The Umpqua/Eden Site (35D083): Exploitation of Marine Resources on the Central Oregon Coast. In: Contributions to the Archaeology of Oregon 1983 1986, edited by Kenneth M. Ames. Association of Oregon Archaeologists Occasional papers No. 3, pp. 88‐101. Roth, Barbara, and Roberta Hall (1995) Archaeological Testing at Site 35CS3. Report to the Coquille Indian Tribe, and on file at the Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University, Corvallis. Seaburg, W.R. (1982) Guide to Pacific Northwest Native American Materials in the Melville Jacobs Collection and in Other Archival Collections in the University of Washington Libraries. University of Washington Libraries, Seattle. Snyder, Sandra Lee (1978) An Osteo Archaeological Investigation of Pinniped Remains at Seal Rock, Oregon (35 LNC 14). M.A.I.S. thesis, Oregon State University, Corvallis. Suttles, Wayne, editor (1990) Handbook of North American Indians, Northwest Coast, Vol.7, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., pp. 572 579. Tasa, Guy L, Todd J. Braje, and Thomas J. Connolly (2004) Archaeological Evaluation of Sites within the Yachats Ocean Road Project (35LNC48 and 35LNC63). OSMA Report 2004‐8. Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon, Eugene. Tasa, Guy L. and Thomas J. Connolly (1994) Archaeological Evaluation Along the Oregon Coast Highway (US Highway 101), Clatsop County: Camp Rilea to Dellmoor Loop Road Section. State Museum of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Report 94‐5, Eugene. Tasa, Guy L. and Thomas J. Connolly (1995) Archaeological Evaluation of the Boiler Bay Site (35LNC45), in the Boiler Bay State Park Section of the Oregon Coast Highway (US Highway 101), Lincoln County, Oregon. State Museum of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Report 95‐2, Eugene. Tasa, Guy L. and Thomas J. Connolly (1998) Cultural Resource Evaluation of Two Archaeological Sites on Youngs Bay, Clatsop County, Oregon: John Day River Bridge Youngs Bay Bridge (Astoria Bypass) Section, Lower Columbia Highway (U.S. 30), Clatsop County, Oregon. Oregon State Museum of Anthropology Report 98‐3. University of Oregon, Eugene. Tasa, Guy L. and Thomas J. Connolly (2001) Archaeological Investigations at Cook’s Chasm Bridge, the Good Fortune Point Site (35LNC55), and the Neptune Site (35LA3). OSMA Report 2001‐4. State Museum of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene.

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Tasa, Guy L. and Thomas J. Connolly (2005) Archaeological Evaluation of Three Sites in the Whale Cove Otter Crest Loop Section of the Oregon Coast Highway (US 101), Lincoln County, Oregon. OSMA Report 2005‐237. Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon, Eugene. Tasa, Guy L. and Brian L. O’Neill, editors (2008) Dunes, Headlands, Estuaries, and Rivers. Current Archaeological Research on the Oregon Coast. Association of Oregon Archeologists Occasional Papers No. 8. Eugene, Oregon. Tveskov, Mark Axel (2000) The Coos and Coquille: A Northwest Coast Historical Anthropology. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Oregon, Eugene. Tveskov, Mark Axel (2000) The Bandon Sandspit Site: The Archaeology of a Proto Historic Coquille Indian Village. In: Changing Landscapes: Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Coquille Cultural Preservation Conference, 1999, edited by Robert J. Losey. Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon, pp. 43‐59. Tveskov, Mark, Jon Erlandson and Madonna Moss (1995) Preliminary Results of Archaeological Excavations at 35 CS 136, Coquille Point, Bandon, Oregon. Report to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; on file at University of Oregon, Eugene. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Oregon Coastal Field Office (1999) Environmental Assessment, Ni‐ les’tun Unit Addition, Bandon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. Newport, Oregon. Valentine, Nicholas (1993) Cultural Resource Inventory at Coquille Point, National Wildlife Refuge, Coos County, Oregon. Report for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 1, Portland, Oregon, 23 pp. Wells, William (1856) Wildlife in Oregon. Harper's New Monthly Magazine 13(77): 588‐608. Younker, Jason, Mark A. Tveskov, and David G. Lewis, editors (2001) Changing Landscapes: Telling Our Stories. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Coquille Cultural Preservation Conference, 2000. Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon. Zontek, Terry (1983) Aboriginal Fishing at Seal Rock (35 LC 14) and Neptune (35 LA 3): Late Prehistoric Archaeological Sites on the Central Oregon Coast. M.A.I.S. Thesis, Oregon State University, Corvallis. Zucker, J., K. Hammel and B. Hogfoss (1983, 1987) Oregon Indians. Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland.

Tables: sea mammals, invertebrates, birds, and fish

Table 1. Sea mammals found in archaeological sites on the Oregon coast Common name Formal name or category California sea lion Zalophus californianus Harbor porpoise Phocoena phocoena Harbor seal Phoca vitulina Northern fur seal Callorhinus ursinus Northern elephant seal Mirounga angustirostris Sea otter Enhydra lutris Steller sea lion Eumetopias jubatus Whale Cetacea sp.

Ecological Baselines 29

Most common: The Steller sea lion, the sea otter, and the harbor seal are the most common sea mammals identified in Oregon coastal sites. Most of these sea mammals have declined in numbers or in locations and two, the sea otter and Northern fur seal, no longer pup on the Oregon coast. Sea mammals were used for their skins, oil and meat, and some internal organs were used to store oil and blubber; teeth were made into ornaments.

Table 2. Invertebrates Found in Oregon Coast Archaeological Sites

Category Formal name Common name (may vary chronologically and geographically) Molluscs Bivalve Mytilus californianus California or sea mussel Bivalve Mytilus edulis bay mussel Bivalve Protothaca staminea Pacific little necked clam Bivalve Saxidomus giganteus butter clam Bivalve Tresus capax northern gaper clam Bivalve Tresus nuttallii Pacific gaper Bivalve Clinocardium nuttallii basket cockle or Heart cockle Bivalve Macoma nasuta bent nosed clam Bivalve Macoma secta sand clam Bivalve Volsella rectus horse mussel Bivalve Siliqua patula razor clam Bivalve Mya arenaria soft shelled clam introduced Eastern species Bivalve Haliotis refescens red abalone Bivalve Penitella or Zirfarea sp. piddock Bivalve Ostrea lurida native oyster Bivalve Hinnites multirugosus giant rock scallop Chiton Malopalia muscova hairy chiton Chiton Katharina tunicata black katy chiton Chiton Cryptochiton stelleri gumboot chiton Snail Notoacmaea sp. owl’s eye limpet Snail Diadora aspera keyhole limpet Snail Acmaea mitra whitecap limpet Snail Acmaea pelta shield limpet Snail Collisella digitalis fingered limpet Snail Acmaea testudinalis plate limpet Snail Notoacmaea sp. limpets (various) Snail Ocenebra lurida lurid rock shell Snail Kellia laperousii kelly shell Snail Tegula funebralis black turban or top snail Snail Amphissa columbiana wrinkled amphissa Snail Fusitriton oregonensis frilled dogwinkle or Oregon triton Snail Nucella canaliculata channeled dogwinkle or whelk Snail Nucella emarginata emarginate dogwinkle Snail Nucella lamellosa frilled or wrinkled dogwinkle or whelk Snail Olivella biplicata purple olive snail Snail Searlesia dira dire whelk Snail Nassarius fossatus western nassar Snail Nassarius perpinguis western fat nassar Arthropods Barnacle Balanus crenlatus crenulated barnacle Barnacle Balanus glandula acorn barnacle Barnacle Balanus nubilus giant (acorn) barnacle

30 Ecological Baselines

Category Formal name Common name (may vary chronologically and geographically Barnacle (Semi)balanus cariosus horse barnacle Barnacle Mitella polymerus goose barnacle Barnacle Policipes polymerus leaf barnacle Crab Cancer magister Dungeness crab Crab Cancer productus red rock crab Echinoidea Urchin Stryoglycentrotus franciscanus red sea urchin Urchin Stryoglycentrotus purpuratus purple sea urchin Sand dollar Dentraster excentricus western sand dollar

Most common: The sea mussel, various clams, and barnacles are most common, the types of clams and barnacles depending on whether the site borders an estuary or is on the rocky coast. Although some invertebrates found in middens are considered “hitch hikers” on food items, native people made jewelry out of shellfish such as snails and abalone, which also could have been traded; dentalium does not grow locally but served coastal natives as currency in some purchases. Some (e.g., sea mussel) preserve well because of a thick shell in contrast, e.g., to crabs and sea urchins, which do not preserve well.

Table 3. Birds found in Oregon coast archaeological sites Common name Formal name or genus Albatross Diomedea sp. American coot Fulica americana Bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus Band tailed pigeon Columba fasciata Barrow’s goldeneye Bucephala islandica Belted kingfisher Ceryle alcyon Blue (Dusky) grouse Dendragapus obscurus Brant Branta bernicla Brown pelican Pelecanus occidentalis Bufflehead Bucephala albeola Canada goose Branta canadensis Cassin’s auklet Ptychoramphus aleuticus Common murre Uria aalge Cormorant Phalacrocorax sp. Crow Corvus brachyrhunchos Gadwall Anas strepera Green winged teal Anas crecca, Mallard Anas platyrhynchos Northern pintail Anas acuta American wigeon Anas Americana Great blue heron Ardea herodias Great horned owl Bubo virginianus Western grebe Aechmophorus occidentalis Horned grebe Podiceps auritus Grebe Podilymbus sp. Gull Larus sp. Hawk Buteo sp. Killdeer Charadrius vociferus Ecological Baselines 31

Common name Formal name or genus Common loon Gavia immer Pacific loon Gavia pacifica Red throated loon Gavia stellata Marbled murrelet Brachyramphus marmoratus Merganser Mergus or Lophodytes sp. Northern shoveler Spatula clypeata Osprey Pandion haliaetus Owl Strigidae sp. Pacific fulmar Fulmarus glacialis Pigeon guillemot Cepphus columba Phalarope Phalaropus sp. Plover Charadrius sp. and/or Pluvialis sp. Quail Callipepla sp. Rail Rallus or Gallinula Raven Corvus corax Rhinoceros auklet Ptychoramphus aleuticus Ruddy duck Oxyuru jamaicensis Ruffled grouse Bonasa umbellus Sanderling Crocenthia alba Sandpiper Scolopacidae; Calidris Scaup Aythya sp Surf scoter Melanitta perspicillata Scoter Melanitta sp. Skua Cataracta skua Sooty shearwater Puffinus griseus Storm petrel Oceanodroma sp. Tundra swan Cygnus columbianus Tufted puffin Frateroula corniculata Western screech owl Megascops kennicotti Wood duck AIxsponsa Pileated woodpecker Dryocopus pileatus Woodpecker Picidae sp.

Most common: dabbling duck species, cormorants, scaups (bay ducks), scoters (sea ducks), gulls, and the common murre. Native people gathered eggs from bird nests and harvested the birds for food, decoration, raw materials for tools and whistles/pan pipes and bird callers, ritual material or wealth for exchange (e.g., pileated woodpecker scalps), and they made clothing – capes – out of at least one species, cormorants. Because natives put almost all available resources to use, the middens can be considered to represent the available resource base.

Table 4. Fish species found in Oregon coast archaeological sites Common Name Formal name or category Buffalo sculpin Scorpaenichthys marmoratus English sole Parophrys vetulus or Pleuronichthys vetulus Kelp greenling Hexagrammos decagrammus Lingcod Ophiodon elongatus Longfin smelt Spirinchus thaleichthys Northern anchovy Engraulis mordax Pacific hake Merliccius productus

32 Ecological Baselines

Common Name Formal name or category Pacific halibut Hippoglossus stenolepsis Pacific herring Clupea palasi Pacific lamprey Lampetra tridentata Pacific sand dab Citharichthys soridus Pacific sardine Sardinops sagax Pacific staghorn sculpin Leptocottus armatus Pacific tomcod Microgadus proximus Petrale sole Eopsetta jordani Prickleback Stichaeidae Ratfish Hydrolagus colliei Red Irish lord Hemilepidotus hemilepidotus Redtail surfperch Amphistichus rhodoterus Rockfishes Sebastes miniatus (vermillion) melanops (black) paucispinis (boccacio) flavidus (yellowtail) ruberrimus (turkey red) Salmonids Oncorhynchus tshawytscha (chinook) Oncorhynchus kisutch (coho) Oncorhynchus clarki (cutthroat trout) Oncorhynchus mykiss (steelhead) Shiner perch Cymatogaster aggregata Skate Rajidae Soupfin shark Galeorhinus zyopterus or galeus Spiny dogfish Squatus acanthias Starry flounder Platichthys stellatus Striped seaperch Embiotoca lateralis Sturgeon (green) Acipenser medirostris Sturgeon (white or Pacific) Acipenser transmontanus Smelt Osmeridae Surf perch Embiotocidae; Amphistichus sp. Pile surf perch Damalichthys vacca Surf smelt Hypomesus pretiosus Threespine stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus Topsmelt Atherinops affinis

Most common: Salmon, herring, and rockfish are common in Oregon’s coastal middens. Lamprey have few hard parts that preserve but are known from ethnographic studies and oral histories to have been plentiful along the coast. For an excellent discussion of prehistoric and contact era fish that uses extensive ethnographic and archival documents, and for detailed information and references concerning historic era observations (1800s, early 1900s) of habitat change and species losses, see Byram 2002: 65 82. He also shows that native communities, like today’s coastal towns and cities, were highly dependent on available fish, although they also used many land‐based resources.

Ecological Baselines 33

Shifting Salmon Baselines

Courtland L. Smith, Emeritus Professor, School of Language, Culture, and Society, Oregon State University

Jennifer S. Gilden, Associate Staff Officer, Communications and Information Pacific Fishery Management Council

Karina Lorenz Mrakovcich, Professor, Science Department, U.S. Coast Guard Academy

Introduction When people and organizations address environmental issues, knowing what has happened in the past is helpful. This knowledge can show the amount of change that has taken place, identify restoration options, and characterize system changes that have caused increases and decreases in abundance and diversity of flora and fauna. Baselines for salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) populations would be very helpful for getting a good temporal picture of change, choosing restoration options, dealing with climate change, and writing management rules. The past sheds light on the dynamics of systems, the range of variation these systems have endured, and how system elements interact. A baseline allows for comparisons of past and present, pre and post actions to introduced changes.

Extensive study of salmon populations shows the problem of shifting abundance and species diversity due to natural and human causes. Compared to the recent past, more salmon are returning to Oregon coastal streams than to other areas of the Pacific Northwest (Figure 1). However, compared to an estimated 1750 baseline, numbers and diversity of Oregon coastal salmon are lower. Studies reveal that human activities, many done with the best of intentions, have failed to improve conditions for salmon.

The coming of Euro‐American settlers to the Pacific Northwest was a significant population movement that affected Oregon coastal habitats and indigenous peoples. The major impacts of Euro‐American cultures began after the 1750s with the devastating impact of disease (Boyd 1999). The settlers brought an agricultural philosophy with its associated tools, plants, animals, and changes to the landscape. In the early twentieth century, coastal forests were extensively harvested and the wood shipped to support growing cities.

Even with the rise of logging, farming, and fishing in the nineteenth century, human impacts on the Oregon coast were lighter than on other areas of the Pacific Northwest (Mrakovcich 1998; Augerot 2005). This is because the geology of many coastal headlands and river valleys made north to south movement difficult for early settlers. In the twentieth century, most coastal streams escaped the damming that occurred elsewhere, but coastal mountains experienced extensive logging. Currently, the population of Oregon coastal communities numbers in the thousands. Most communities are in coastal valleys near and at the mouths of rivers (often named after local tribes such as the Alsea, Coquille, Coos,

34 Ecological Baselines

Nehalem, Rogue, Siletz, Siuslaw, Tillamook, and Yaquina). Largest is Coos Bay at 16,685. Newport at 10,605 and Astoria at 10,110 are about two‐thirds the size of Coos Bay.

Figure 1. Oregon’s coastal region showing location of major coastal rivers and municipal areas. Indigenous settlements tended to cluster around riverine systems, as do cities in 2012, because these provided resources that were traded with other indigenous villages in the watershed. Indigenous tribal identities tended to be associated with watersheds.

Shifting nature of baselines Salmon depend on three major ecosystems—rivers, estuaries, and the ocean. The anadromous life cycle of salmon begins in their home stream where they emerge from eggs and gain size. They migrate to the ocean through estuaries and there they continue to grow and acclimate to salt water. In the ocean, salmon reach maturity before they return to their Ecological Baselines 35 home streams. This life cycle subjects them to variability in ocean currents and productivity, climate patterns affecting rainfall and temperature, estuarine habitats, catastrophic events like floods and fire, and land modifications and uses adjacent to streams.

Because of their natural variability, combined with changing human impacts, baselines for salmon numbers are difficult to fix (Chapman 1986). Additionally, data on historical measurements of salmon populations and their trends are best estimates, often based on harvest numbers.

Figure 2. Coastal Oregon commercial salmon catches from 1892 to 1993 showing general decline in catch and extensive variability. From Botkin et al. (1995:33).

Figure 2 shows two patterns. One is a general decline in pounds of coastal salmon caught since 1892 (Botkin et al. 1995:150). Second is great variability in salmon catches. The second pattern raises the question of what is an appropriate baseline to use in estimating healthy salmon population sizes. Should the baseline be 1924‐1930, a particularly good time for salmon harvests? Or should the baseline be 1900‐1903, a period of particularly low catches? Or should the baseline be the average for some longer period of time like 1892‐1940? What is the right beginning and end point? Too often the baseline used is for some recent period, like 1971‐1975, which is below the long‐term average and well below the average from 1910‐1940.

36 Ecological Baselines

Three data sources are merged to produce Figure 2. The early data are from Mullen (1981:2‐6) who used cannery records for 1892‐1922. These records were not separated by species, nor did they include other modes of preparation. Cannery records were enhanced by adjusting for the percent canned and sold fresh, salted, and smoked. Correction factors calculated the weight of fish caught from the canned weight. Data after 1922 come from catch statistics collected by the Oregon Fish Commission and after 1975, its successor, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. With the creation of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, and its responsibility to manage Chinook (O. tshawytscha) and coho (O. kisutch) salmon fisheries, catch data were further refined to give a general picture of the amount of salmon landed in Oregon, and added later were detailed statistics on the runs providing the catch. These data also include some salmon from Columbia River packers who moved salmon to coastal canneries for packing in the early years. Thus, while Figure 2 shows a general pattern of the baseline for coastal rivers south of the Columbia, it still is not as accurate as some would like.

Figure 2 is complicated in another way. Note the improvement in catches from 1960‐ 1977, a period of increasing hatchery production. The percentage of hatchery fish contributing to the harvest reached over 70% at this time (PMFC), masking a greater decline in wild salmon stocks (Nicholas and Hankin 1988; NRC 1996). Further, not all the fish reported are caught from Oregon streams and rivers, since salmon trollers catch the majority of salmon from natal streams and rivers outside the coastal area (for example the Klamath and Sacramento Rivers). Where should the baseline be set and on what time period should it be based? Is the salmon catch a good proxy for the health and abundance of salmon stocks and runs? Long‐term ecological studies of the coastal region show that many natural factors such as ocean productivity, fire, predators, parasites, disease, drought, floods, landslides, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes also affect the abundance of salmon and complicate the issue of identifying baselines.

History of management In a general sense, people who use resources evolve rules that are appropriate for their group. Indigenous harvesters followed rules that often protected the resource (Hunn and Williams 1982; Harkin and Lewis 2007; Lake 2007). The rules established by Euro‐ Americans after the 1860s tried to maximize the amount that could be caught using concepts like maximum sustainable yield (Wendler 1966; Crutchfield and Pontecorvo 1969; Lichatowich 1999), while also maintaining stock sizes (Ricker 1975). With passage of the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act in 1976, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) has had primary responsibility for regulating the harvest and protection of ocean fishing of West Coast salmon. The PMFC manages coho and Chinook salmon fisheries from the Mexican to the Canadian borders, and assembles data on salmon abundance and distribution by river throughout California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington PFMC (2012).

Planning for salmon management began under emergency provisions of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act with the 1977 fishing season. The first four of eight PFMC management goals were to:

• maintain optimum spawning stock escapement, Ecological Baselines 37

• reduce fishery‐caused mortality other than those fish landed (to prevent mortality from hooking and not landing troll‐caught salmon), • move toward fulfilling Indian treaty obligations, • provide all ocean and "inside" fisheries the continuing opportunity to harvest salmon (PFMC 1978:i). The main human activity controlled by the PFMC is fishing pressure; the PFMC has no jurisdiction over actions in fresh water that affect salmon, although it comments on such actions and their likely effects. As stocks continued to decline (Figure 2), management restraints increased and became more area‐and stock‐specific. Fishing seasons became shorter, gears were increasingly restricted, and fishing areas were more confined. Additional constraints from the Endangered Species Act have introduced land‐use restoration and habitat protection activities to improve salmon conditions. Coastal salmon fishery closures in 1994 and 2009, however, show the limited success in meeting salmon abundance improvement goals. The causes of salmon decline are complex and have unfolded over many years. Despite management and restoration efforts, the current baseline falls well below what is estimated for 1750.

Regional and species comparisons To look at the baseline question more broadly, Mrakovcich (1998) developed a database for 202 watersheds with salmon populations in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, specifically, Puget Sound; coastal Washington and the north coast of Oregon; the central and southern Oregon coasts; lower and upper Columbia Basin; Snake; Klamath, and Sacramento basins). Mrakovcich compared several land use and social variables to the status of five salmon stocks (fall Chinook, spring Chinook, summer Chinook, coho, and winter steelhead [O. mykiss]) in each of these watersheds in 1990. The variables for each watershed cover the ecoregion type; number and location of dams and hatcheries; forest condition; amount of agriculture and urbanization; presence of watershed organizations, American Indian tribes, and scenic rivers; and condition of salmon stocks. Not all species are present in all watersheds.

Mrakovcich’s data came from two region‐wide studies on the status of salmon. One focused more on stocks at risk (Nehlsen et al. 1991); the other focused on healthy stocks (Huntington et al. 1996). A third study by Nawa (1995) reported on the condition of 417 Chinook salmon stocks in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and was used to check for consistency between the two other reports. Mrakovcich found that the average salmon stock status in the Pacific Northwest was “at risk of extinction” (49%) or “already extinct” (20%). Region wide, winter steelhead were healthiest, followed by fall Chinook, coho, spring Chinook, and summer Chinook. Columbia Basin stocks, as of 1990, were the least healthy but subsequently, these stocks have increased as a result of hydro system modifications, habitat programs, hatchery practices, and reduced harvest.

Mrakovich’s study showed that all species of salmon were strongly associated with selected human impact variables in watersheds, estuaries, and the oceans (Table 1). Dams were the only variable that was not species‐specific. The greater the number of dams in a watershed or the more of a watershed is blocked by a dam, the worse the status of salmon (Mrakovcich 1998), irrespective of other conditions in the watershed. This result agrees

38 Ecological Baselines with several other studies that have suggested a negative impact of dams on salmon abundance (Botkin er al. 1995, NRC 1996, ISG 2000, Williams 2006; Gustafson et al. 2007).

Species/race of salmon Least healthy salmon stocks Healthier salmon stocks are listed in order from least are associated with… associated with… healthy to healthiest Summer Chinook Dams Hatcheries (44 stocks) – 55% extinct Subdivision Watershed organizations Other developments Spring Chinook Dams Wild and Scenic Rivers (94 stocks) – 35% extinct Tribal land Wilderness US Forest Service land Coho Dams Forest lands (56 stocks) – 27% extinct Agricultural lands Non‐USFS land Human population size Watershed organizations Fall Chinook Dams Non‐USFS land (80 stocks) – 19% extinct US Forest Service land Forest land

Winter Steelhead Dams Hatcheries (96 stocks) – 10% extinct Agricultural land Tribal land Human population size Table 1: Significant associations between salmon stocks and variables including human factors in 202 Pacific Northwest watersheds (Mrakovcich 1998).

Converging constraints on salmon While the exact percentage of decline is not known, it is generally understood that salmon populations are less than they were in 1750. Many would like to see salmon numbers increase. However, in order to increase, the constraints on salmon populations must be understood, and actions must be taken to increase their numbers. The constraints that salmon face are a mix of natural and human caused variability and change. Salmon numbers are affected by natural factors, often exacerbated by human activities, such as ocean conditions, natural disturbances, and predators and disease.

Principal human causes contributing to the decline in salmon populations include hatcheries; faulty scientific assessments of stock abundance; fishing pressure; forest, farm, and urban land use practices; introduced species; and changing public attitudes.

Natural factors affecting salmon numbers Salmon have returned to Northwest streams for thousands of years and have been an important source of food and identity for Northwest peoples for much of that time (Slickpoo and Walker 1973; Hunn and Williams 1982; Martin 1994, 2008; Lang and Carriker 1999). Salmon populations varied naturally and influenced the rise and fall of the salmon Ecological Baselines 39 harvest. Archaeological analysis of faunal remains reflects a wide variety of food sources, including fish, shellfish, land animals, and birds (Hall 1991, 1995, 2001; Butler and Campbell 2004). Archaeological studies show the presence of salmon, but the archaeological record is insufficient to estimate what the baseline numbers of salmon in 1750 might have been. To estimate the range of variation, more archaeological data are necessary, along with more complete evaluations of these data (Lyman 1991; Butler and Campbell 2004).

Scientific studies of ocean conditions, natural disturbances, and salmon interactions with predators and disease have elaborated some of the dynamics of conditions affecting salmon. Ocean conditions and natural disturbances have been reconstructed with considerable accuracy and temporal depth (Francis and Hare 1994; Mantua et al. 1997; Francis et al. 1998; Hessl et al. 2004). The history of predators and disease are less well known, but studies show the contemporary impact on salmon populations (Menchen 1981; Miller et al. 2011). As better historic estimates of predators are obtained, the temporal data can be extended to earlier time periods.

Ocean conditions Ocean conditions vary with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO; Mysak 1986; Nickelson 1986; Johnson 1988; Lawson 1993; McGowan et al. 1998). Between 1976 and 1977, a natural shift in North Pacific climatic conditions correlated with a decline in ocean survival of both hatchery and wild coho. Survival rates for naturally spawning stocks dropped from 6% to below 2% (NRC 1996). El Niño and La Niña cycles occur within the PDO. A severe 1982‐1983 El Niño showed the impact these short‐term ocean conditions could have on growth and survival of salmon, number of juveniles entering the ocean, and food sources for maturing fish. Poor ocean conditions resulting from climatic changes persisted into the mid 1990s (Francis and Hare 1994; Francis et al. 1998; Mantua et al. 1997; Northwest Fisheries Science Center 2010). Slowly, findings from studies of ocean movements of salmon (Pearcy 1992) have become part of the explanation of shifting salmon baselines. Other, longer ocean cycles also affect salmon numbers, but less is known about the impact of these cycles (Soutar and Isaacs 1969; Francis and Hare 1994; Hessl et al. 2004).

Natural disturbance Landslides, floods, drought, wind, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and fire have always been part of the salmon ecosystem, and salmon have adaptive strategies (Stouder et al. 1997; Schindler et al. 2003) like ocean rearing, life cycle diversity (Nicholas and Hankin 1998), and homing (Quinn 1993), to cope with these changes. The coastal region has a very active geology. The terrain is steep and winter rains saturate soils that bring landslides. Landslides and debris block streams when salmon try to navigate to or from spawning grounds. A landslide or volcanic eruption can block a river, but some returning salmon will stray into a neighboring stream.

Floods can change channel morphology, but different species of salmon can take advantage of the new habitats. When drought reduces stream flows, salmon will linger in the ocean until water levels improve. Different run timing allows the return of salmon to streams at more opportune times. Wind can add structure to streams as trees are blown down. Earthquakes can change the structure of estuaries, but some salmon species spend

40 Ecological Baselines less time in estuaries than others or might find rearing habitat in a changed estuary. Fire can destroy forest cover or can add large wood to streams.

Human interventions can increase the problems from natural disturbances. For example, road building can increase the severity and problems associated with landslides (Gucinski et al. 2001). Channelizing streams can increase flood damage, prevent development of channel complexity, and destroy salmon spawning and rearing habitat (Bisson et al. 2003, 2009). Water diversion, damming, and channelizing can reduce hyporheic flows during times of drought. When clear‐cuts expose trees to wind, more trees can be damaged, thus reducing streamside cover. Fire suppression can lead to more detrimental, stand‐replacement fires (Rieman et al. 2010).

Predation and disease Young salmon are preyed on by birds, while adult salmon are the prey of marine mammals. Young salmon are taken by other fish such as the northern pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus oregonensis) and other species of salmon. Birds such as cormorants and Caspian terns can prey heavily on juvenile salmon, especially when salmon are clustered in areas due to constrained river or stream flows (Collis et al. 2001). The amount of bird take is dependent on the salmon baseline population and the relative change in the size of the bird populations. Longitudinal data are not available, but concern about bird predation increases as salmon abundance declines. Cormorants, opportunistic feeders, may be the most efficient avian salmon predator. However, they tend to prefer bottom fish and crustaceans (Botkin et al. 1995:142).

In the 1970s, marine mammal populations—pinnipeds, seals, and sea lions—were very low, and the quantity of salmon available for harvest was much larger. By the early 1990s, the reverse was true. Kacznyski and Palmisano (1993) estimate that marine mammals could account for as much as 16% of the total take of salmon, while Park (1993) claims that marine mammals and birds may take more salmon by weight than are caught by humans. Other scientists are skeptical of these numbers (Botkin et al. 1995:132). Baseline numbers of salmon and of marine mammals are critically important in estimating marine mammal predation.

In addition to climatic variability, natural disturbances, and predators, salmon have been coping with disease since they evolved. Viruses and parasites commonly affect salmon, and concentrating salmon in fish farms and hatcheries increases the spread of disease. Riparian habitat damage that increases stream temperatures and reduces water flows also makes salmon more susceptible to disease and parasites, as does rising temperature due to climate change (Miller et al. 2011).

Human factors affecting salmon numbers Human efforts to control and increase salmon productivity have a major impact on salmon baselines. Although humans are working to restore and preserve salmon habitat, humans also compete with salmon for habitat and generally have put their own needs first.

Ecological Baselines 41

Hatcheries The U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries was created in 1871 in part to create and manage salmon hatcheries (Bottom 1997). The first Commissioner, Spencer F. Baird (1875), came to Oregon to promote the use of hatcheries. Another early hatchery advocate was R.D. Hume, who relocated from the Columbia to the Rogue River in 1877 because he thought he would have more control of the Rogue River fishery. Hume experimented with hatcheries into the early twentieth century (Hume 1893; Dodds 1959). Hatcheries have continued to be a source for enhancement of fisheries, and in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, hatcheries were expected to compensate for runs lost to dam construction and habitat destruction. Through the early 1970s, salmon catches grew with increased hatchery production. Hatchery production grew with better feeds, improved disease control, and a shift to releasing the larger smolts rather than the smaller fry. Then in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as hatcheries released more salmon, particularly coho, production began to decrease and growth in production proved unsustainable. Studies pointed to problems caused by reliance on hatcheries, and scientists debated their effectiveness (Hilborn 1992; Licatowich 1999). A confounding problem was heavy predation by hatchery‐raised steelhead smolts on Chinook salmon fry (Menchen 1981).

Hatcheries increase survival rates for the early part of the life cycle, so a higher percentage of salmon eggs become fry and smolts than they would in the wild. As a result, hatchery stocks can sustain higher exploitation rates than naturally spawning salmon. However, during the latter part of the twentieth century, fishery managers set the exploitation rates too high for naturally spawning stocks.

Until the early twenty‐first century, hatchery management programs were pursued on the belief that more hatchery production was better. Issues such as economic efficiency of production, protection of biological diversity, and impacts on wild stocks were not included in hatchery management decisions. Hatchery fish have not been found to develop the survival traits common to naturally spawning salmon. In addition, economic efficiency goals led hatchery managers to select for stocks that were easiest and cheapest to obtain. Hatcheries took fish at the peak of their run, when more were available and collection was faster and less expensive. This practice, combined with the selection of only certain stocks, resulted in less genetic diversity.

One of the adaptive strategies of salmon is to stray to new habitats, leading to mixing of hatchery and naturally spawning stocks. The lower genetic diversity of hatchery fish reduces the diversity of naturally spawning stocks when the two populations mix. Diseased hatchery stocks infect naturally spawning populations when the stocks mix. The mechanisms for and occurrences of disease transmission are not well understood.

Research on hatchery problems has led to changes in practices, with more hatcheries mimicking natural conditions and patterns (OHRC 2010). In addition, harvest rules seek to protect wild salmon stocks. Still, the hatchery issue poses a value issue about salmon management. Is the harvest of salmon for human use the primary goal? Or do salmon have other habitat benefits that deserve equal or greater attention? What is the value of salmon to Northwest cultures?

42 Ecological Baselines

Scientific understanding Scientific knowledge tends to lag behind human induced changes and natural changes, and it is late in being incorporated into effective salmon management. Further, scientific understanding in the twentieth century has been driven by the pressure to produce salmon for fun and food (Smith 1979; Lichatowich 1999; Blumm 2002).

Significant biases and poor measurement techniques affected estimates of total number of spawning salmon during the 1970s and 1980s (Botkin et al. 1995; NRC 1996). For example, the annual stream surveys counting the salmon returning to spawn were conducted at a number of sampling sites and this number was multiplied by stream miles to get a total estimate. The sites where counts were made, however, were not representative of the salmon production capacities of all coastal streams, but were selected as “reference sites” where spawning was often concentrated. It was common knowledge among fish samplers that the sites selected for sampling were often dictated by convenience—proximity to a road or bridge—rather than by some strictly scientific sampling method (Botkin et al. 1995; NRC 1996). These errors have been corrected.

In addition, during the 1980s, stock recruitment curves used by management were improperly estimated. The curve was based on years of high ocean survival and incorrectly estimated escapement needs. This led to setting harvest exploitation rates too high and decimating wild coho populations (Noakes et al. 2000). Critics of fishery management argued that these management errors, which favored harvest, showed the institutional bias of management agencies toward their principal clientele, the fishers. Even if the scientific errors were unintended, the bias toward harvest limited interest in other issues like biodiversity (Ward 1998), habitat quality (Bisson et al. 2009), and ocean conditions (Mantua et al. 1997).

The stock‐recruitment model applied to salmon promised maximum sustainable catches—maximum sustainable yield. The model is based on the idea of density dependence, which means that increased growth and survival rates can be achieved by reducing crowding. Density dependence is a concept that comes to fisheries from farming—the thinning of trees and many crops increases productivity. The pressure for greater harvests led fishery management agencies to continually set exploitation rates that did not recognize the ecological value of salmon carcasses, did not consider the importance of genetic diversity, and overlooked the already too‐low spawner escapement goals.

Finally, the application of the best scientific knowledge requires resources. Public demands of more from government with less cost have increased. During the first decade of the twenty‐first century, legislatures cut funding to fish and wildlife agencies. State fishery agencies had to justify their budgets as the population of recreational fishers declined and commercial fisheries became less profitable.

Fishing Salmon have been a food source for Native Americans as long as these peoples have inhabited the Pacific Northwest (Hewes 1947; Soutar and Issacs 1969; Finney et al. 2000, 2002; Gresh et al. 2000; Suttles 1968; Butler and Campbell 2004; Augerot 2005; Campbell and Butler 2010). Prior to European settlement, indigenous peoples traded over a wide Ecological Baselines 43 area for some resources such as pelts (clothes), obsidian (tools), and shells (currency and jewelry), but the food economy was based mainly on local resources and did not supply a wider area outside the group’s watershed.

In the 1850s, treaties tried to define the allocation of the available salmon. On Oregon’s north coast, where most of the native peoples died as a result of introduced diseases, no treaties were signed. Treaties were signed on Oregon’s south coast, but the treatment of tribal peoples was such that few could use fisheries for their livelihood (Van Laere 2010). With the development of commercial salmon fishing and canning in the twentieth century, there were few limits on commercial catch, and most commercially caught salmon were sold outside the region.

In the 1900s, more regulation came to salmon fishing in the form of seasons, gear limitations, and spatial restrictions. While these limitations were ostensibly for the purpose of protecting salmon, they often had the effect of allocating catch between gears and fishing activities (Smith 1974). As catches in streams decreased and streams were closed to fishing, harvesting moved into the ocean. In the 1970s, international fleets fished off the Oregon coast, and many salmon fishers felt that foreigners were taking their salmon. The effect of non‐domestic fishing was mitigated to some extent by an explosion of hatchery

Figure 3. Coho exploitation rates 1890‐2009. Bar graph from Pacific Fishery Management council data (PFMC 2010). releases, particularly coho salmon. A goal of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 was to recapture fisheries for domestic fishermen. Commercial salmon catches peaked in 1977 and catches have generally declined since.

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Treaty and non‐treaty Indian, commercial, and recreational fishers were allowed to harvest coho at rates of 70‐80% of the ocean production from 1950 to 1983 (Figure 3). The high harvest rates led to some of the best coho catches ever, because the harvest rates were supported by heavy reliance on hatchery fish. Harvest rates from the years 1970‐1985 show little variability but this could be the result of simply being best estimates. Decline in ocean productivity after 1977 and heavy losses in wild stocks caused by high harvest rates led to harvest rate declines. In 1994, salmon fishing for coho was closed because of depressed stock levels. The 1994 closure was followed by significantly reduced harvest rates. The average harvest rate from 1995‐2009 was 15%, well below what had been allowed before 1990. In 2009, trolling for Chinook, too, was closed, and reopened in 2010 with more restrictive catch rules. The pattern of fishing for salmon continues to be one of increase in restrictions on area and time allowed and on gear used (Wright 1993).

Land use Forest, agricultural, and urban land uses have detrimental impacts on salmon and make construction of baselines difficult. People often modify and use lands and processes critical to maintaining salmon ecosystems without thinking about the consequences for salmon (Frissell 1992; ISAB 2003‐3).

From mid 1925 to 1992, logging was one of the most significant contributors to coastal economies. In the coastal counties of Clatsop, Tillamook, Lincoln, Coos, and Curry an average of 1.5 million board feet was harvested annually.1 In the 1920s and 1930s, these coastal counties provided about one third of Oregon’s timber harvest. As the state harvest grew, the contribution of these coastal counties dropped to about one fifth. In general, prior to 1992, timber was the largest economic sector in coastal economies.

Forest practices such as clear‐cutting, splash dams and log drives, road building, absence of stream buffers, and pollution from herbicides and pesticides result in water and riparian conditions that are detrimental to salmon. Clear‐cutting, road building, and the absence of stream buffers lead to elevated temperatures and sediment levels. Both are detrimental to salmon spawning and survival. Splash dams and log drives (common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) led to scouring of stream channels and poor spawning conditions. Logging roads increase silt in streams and degrade spawning habitat, and culverts prevent upstream passage of salmon. In addition, loss of forest cover and large woody debris in streams result in high water temperatures and loss of protective habitats for young salmon (Bisson et al. 2009). This results in less protection from predators and reduced habitat for macro‐invertebrates, an important food source for salmon. With the listing of the northern spotted owl in 1990 and strengthening of the Forest Practices Act (ODF 2009), forest land use practices have improved.

Fire suppression practices, the purpose of which is to protect timber stocks, result in hotter and more devastating fires that destroy forest cover in watersheds. These “stand replacement fires” led to increased siltation, which destroys salmon spawning habitat. Further, the issue of what to do after significant fires has been a topic of dispute. Some argue that salvage logging is critical to helping salmon after a fire. Others say that letting nature recover the burned area is best (Reeves et al. 1995; Lake 2007).

1 Douglas and Lane counties have substantial areas that are not coastal. Ecological Baselines 45

Agriculture has been particularly detrimental to salmon because historically farmers removed the meanders from streams where salmon overwinter. Silvicultural and agricultural practices reduce plant diversity and habitat for salmon. In addition, agricultural activities can add pesticides and animal pollution that threaten salmon survival, remove stream vegetation, raise water temperatures to detrimental levels, and degrade riparian habitats. Along the coast, most agriculture is in low‐lying river valleys where much of the land is affected by tides. To protect the agricultural lands from tides, fields have tide gates that keep incoming tides from entering fields, and drain water that may have overtopped a dike or gotten into a field. These tide gates can obstruct fish migration and under some conditions trap young fish in fields. Further, pulses of coliform bacteria that are harmful to fish can flow into rivers during low tides (Simenstad et al. 1982; Gregory and Bisson 1997). With this knowledge, new types of tide gates are being designed and revised agricultural practices are being implemented.

Urbanization has many of the same effects as agriculture. The coastal region of Northern California, Oregon, and Washington is not very urbanized, but most of the bays have been both dredged and filled. Further, urban areas gird the mouths of rivers and coastal estuaries. Urbanization has many indirect impacts arising from the demands it places on forests for wood production, farms for food production, and rivers for hydro production and recreation. In the coastal region, the impact of large dams is less than in the Columbia, Snake, and Klamath River basins. However, forest and farm land‐use practices combine to encroach on salmon habitat (ISAB 2003‐2).

Returning salmon are valuable to ecosystems as well as people. Salmon are an important source for bringing ocean nutrients to watersheds (Helfield and Naiman 2001) and vice versa (Moore and Shindler 2004). Salmon and their nutrients are important to a variety of plants, animals, and watershed processes (Kline et al. 1990; Cederholm et al. 1999; Gresh et al. 2000; Naiman et al. 2002; Merz and Moyle 2006).

Introduced species Non‐native species are introduced by people migrating into the region, and introduced species can arrive due to indirect paths. Introduced species compete for habitat, prey on humans and salmon, introduce diseases and parasites, interbreed, and alter habitats. Migratory birds and the migration of salmon can participate in this process. International trade and travel are other mechanisms for the introduction of non‐native plants and animals (Torchin and Mitchell 2004; ISAB 2008‐4). Even before non‐native settlers arrived on the Oregon coast, introduced diseases significantly reduced the populations of native peoples. Settlers exacerbated the introduction of species by bringing plants and animals for their farming activities.

For Pacific Northwest salmon, the introduced species with the greatest impact may be Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), the preferred species for salmon farming. Many people fear the impacts of their escape into the wild and the possibility of interbreeding with Pacific salmon. Non‐native species may introduce parasites and disease, which can spread rapidly in hatcheries and net pens and subsequently spread to wild populations (Waknitz 2003). In addition, prices paid to fishermen for wild salmon have been lowered by the introduction of farmed salmon. However, farmed salmon may reduce harvest pressures on naturally reproducing salmon.

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In addition to direct effects on salmon, introduced species can alter habitats. Reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea), Japanese knotweed, (Fallopia japonica), and Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpa) change the vegetation in riparian areas, wetlands, and estuaries.

Public attitudes Values set the intentions that drive actions. Raising public expectations for past and present salmon (i.e., shifting the baselines) requires a public intention to improve salmon numbers. Social scientists show that the values or attitudes that people hold form the basis of intention (Conte and Castelfranchi 1995; Malle 2004; Malle et al. 2001). These values and attitudes come from culture, are imbedded in social policies, intensified and modified by experience, and affected by people’s need for resources. To increase salmon numbers in reference to salmon baselines, people have to value salmon as important to their lives and ecosystem.

For Euro‐American cultures, one of the dominant values has been to view salmon as a commodity and emphasize the income generated from commercial and recreational fishing (Licatowich 1999). From this perspective, salmon for harvest provides a greater value to society than salmon unharvested. People understand that natural systems are limited, so they use hatcheries to increase production and maintain harvest levels.

A value supporting hatcheries comes from Euro‐American agricultural practices to increase production of valued plants and animals. The logic is that hatcheries increase salmon productivity by reducing juvenile mortality, thereby producing more salmon for anglers and commercial fishers. Further, it has been thought that hatcheries could substitute productivity for habitat lost to forestry, farming, dams, and urbanization. As hatchery technology developed, it was used more and more broadly. The positive effects have been difficult to document, however. Targeted use of hatcheries may improve or begin improving some stocks and enable them to return to historic baselines yet few examples exist of hatchery supplementation being effective over long periods (ISAB 2003‐3; Hilborn et al. 2003; Buhle et al. 2009; RIST 2009). The use of hatcheries to improve numbers is based on people’s experience with agriculture. Certainly, salmon hatcheries and farms have greatly increased salmon numbers, but these are very different salmon than those that naturally spawn in streams and complete their anadromous life cycle. Science is valued as a way that could improve hatchery production and to maximize the use of naturally spawning stocks (OHRC 2010).

Another set of values oriented toward protecting the environment in the face of economic expansion gained political strength in the 1970s and brought passage of laws like the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973 and Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976. The ESA provided a powerful tool for protecting species at risk of extinction. In 1993, conservation groups filed petitions to protect several groups of salmon under the ESA. ESA listings of salmon catch the attention of powerful political and economic interests. Agricultural, forestry, and industrial forces point to the economic costs of protecting salmon and the likely damage to their industries. However, with a broad cross‐section of regional society exposed to the issues surrounding salmon protection, sockeye and Chinook runs in the Columbia‐Snake system received protection under the ESA in 1993. Petitions were then filed to protect coastal coho. Ecological Baselines 47

Loss of naturally spawning salmon led to programs to protect wild stocks. The potential effects of protecting salmon for small communities dependent on resource extraction meant an intensifying contest between the traditional values associated with resource extraction and the emergent values that favored conservation. The debate between economy and ecology is an indicator of reduced salmon populations and the growing fear that society may not have either the commitment nor skill to restore salmon to more nearly the population size that tribal narratives and historic catches suggest might be possible, i.e., to a pre‐contact baseline.

When production for harvest lags or does not meet expectations, coastal communities declare their economic disadvantage (Robards and Greenberg 2007; Martin 2008; Healey 2009). Suggestions to reduce forest extraction and agricultural development to protect salmon tend to split coastal communities along economic and ecological value preferences. Some argue that without a growing timber industry and more productive agriculture, economic well‐being will decline. Therefore, salmon management is complicated by the imperative for economic growth (Limburg et al. 2011).

Conclusion Whatever the baseline used for salmon, the general pattern is one of decline. In the coastal region the absence of dams, less dense human populations, and lower levels of infrastructure result in better conditions for salmon than in other regions. Nevertheless, forest harvest, agriculture, fishing, introduced species, and inadequate science contribute to continuing decline. The pattern of salmon decline is highly variable and affected by efforts to increase the production of salmon, primarily using hatcheries and, more recently, restoration programs. In the first decade of the twenty‐first century, most restoration activities are opportunistic and site‐specific projects (Flitcroft et al. 2009). More landscape‐ oriented approaches are being developed through private and governmental partnerships (B‐E‐F 2009; Federal Caucus 2010).

Over long time periods, baselines have tended to shift toward the current pattern. Thus, contemporary baselines used to set escapement goals have shifted with the decline of the salmon resource and do not reflect conditions in 1750, but often reflect baselines only one or two generations before the present. Although they are compelled to use the best available science, managers lack adequate data on past conditions. Thus, the baselines shift to what people are familiar with in terms of current experience‐‐smaller and smaller salmon populations. Further, salmon populations are highly variable, making the setting of any restoration goal or baseline difficult.

For coastal salmon populations, Botkin et al. (1995:147) note, “… most scientific studies of salmon and their habitats have been done at very small scales of space and time.” Much more is known about Columbia River salmon populations because of the effect of the hydropower system on salmon and because Columbia River dams provide for the collection of long‐term data about salmon runs. Coastal streams do not have long‐term data. Stream surveys of the 1970s and 1980s were flawed for comparative purposes because sampling was not representative. Because coastal streams have been of less concern, fewer resources have been expended to gather data. Historic and archaeological data can give insight into the relative abundance of salmon, but these data are limited in detail.

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People and salmon compete for use of the riverine environments and watersheds that nurture salmon. On the Oregon coast, conditions for salmon are better than in other areas in the Pacific Northwest. Tribes who have inhabited the Oregon coast for thousands of years support improving coastal habitats to improve conditions for salmon. New residents coming to coastal communities depend less on extraction of natural resources for their incomes. These new residents are generally more supportive of conservation values and attitudes.

Setting salmon baselines is very complex, and while much is known, more is still to be learned. Scientific knowledge is improving and providing better understanding of the processes and landscapes critical to salmon survival. Human intentions that guide actions are shifting toward a greater concern for environmental quality. These intentions and the resulting actions create the possibility of reversing the long‐time trajectory of decline. Returning salmon to a higher baseline is a growing possibility because of the public intentions that are directing many actions to improve conditions for salmon in Oregon coastal and other ecosystems.

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The Sea Otter in Oregon’s Past and Present David R. Hatch, Founding member, the Elakha Alliance; member, the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians

In 1934 anthropologist Melville Jacobs described his “ah‐ha” experience when he realized the importance and abundance of Oregon’s estuaries to the natives he was working with:

The most important sources of food were almost too obvious for mention. I obtained no end of what to me were petty details about how individuals conducted minor aspects of hunting and fishing before I discovered that the principal supply of foods was shared by all in a most un‐individualistic manner. The minor details and the rarer foods interested the survivors much more than the general ways in which the larger staples were obtained. As for the latter, I finally learned that the men made prodigious hauls when one or another run of fish came into the Lower Coquille and Coos Bay and that everybody went and got all he or she needed, in the ‘go‐help‐yourself’ free‐for‐all that was actually the largest single source for the Coos larder. This ‘go‐help‐yourself’ was so commonplace and so completely uninteresting to most of the informants that they never volunteered mention of it at all. Annie [Annie Miner Peterson, a primary informant for many anthropologists] remarked upon it lightly in the last days of my work with her, and she was rather amused that I should be interested in anything so prosaic and obvious, or that I had not taken some such thing for granted in the first place (Jacobs 1934).

The marine and anadromous fishes that Jacobs learned were so important to the economy of native Oregonians were Chinook, coho, and chum salmon; steelhead; anchovy; halibut; white and green sturgeon; four types of perch; two types of herring; tomcod; candle fish (ooligan); topsmelt, surf smelt, and longfin smelt; two types of sardines; starry flounder; trout; sucker; chub; blue eels and brown eels; and hake. The abundance of these fishes varied through the year but major fisheries were available during all seasons. Jacobs (1934) observed that his background had not prepared him to appreciate the “…wealth of fish that enter the coastal rivers and bays” of Oregon.

Countless generations of native families benefited from the bounty of the diverse estuary fish populations, and the hundreds of archaeological fish weirs on coastal tide flats are testament to these fishing traditions. Yet today this great abundance of estuary fish has been transformed into an “ecological ghost.” Descendants of those who fished long ago are now members of the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, and the Coquille Indian Tribe. In the past few decades, university and agency anthropologists have begun documenting the age and locations of the traditional wooden fish weirs – some more than 3,000 years old – and analyzing the bones of the coastal middens to re‐discover that coastal communities were not salmon‐centric. Native people harvested an abundance of herring, smelt, lamprey, and other fish, as well as sea mammals and land mammals.

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Reduction of estuaries, depletion of fish, and loss of the sea otter Most Oregonians are aware of contemporary crises of salmon and bottom fish populations but lack awareness of the historic degradation of estuaries, something that native families are very aware of. These changes occurred after families were forced onto the Coast Reservation in 1856, suffered from disease and starvation, watched as the most productive estuaries were removed from the reservation for Euro‐American settlement (in 1865 and 1875), and finally lost most of their reservation land to the federal allotment process. In the meantime, estuaries were drastically reduced in size by logging, diking for dairies, and other processes related to American settlements and cities. Termination of Oregon’s coastal tribes, referring to the process of the federal government terminating its special treaty relationships with native people, occurred in 1954 (Hall 1984). Redress of termination, i.e. restoration and federal recognition, of these tribes began in the late 1970s. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians were restored on November 18, 1977 after years of hard work, and other tribes were restored in subsequent decades (Wilkinson 2010).

In addition to estuary reductions in size, major changes in coastal ecosystems occurred as the sea otter (Enhydra lutris, known as Elakha in Chinook Jargon, the Northwest’s trade language) was effectively removed from the near‐shore ecosystem by fur traders. The last sea otter pelt collected in Oregon near Newport in 1906 sold for $900.00, yet in the past the otter was quite common. In many Oregon middens sea otter remains are the second most common marine mammal bones, following the Steller sea lion, Eumetopias jubatus. Although there have been rare sea otter sightings along the Oregon coast, the species is no longer a part of our ecosystem and thus is not serving its former role as a predator for sub‐ tidal sea urchins (Strongylocentratus sp.; Kenyon 1969). In the absence of predation, these urchins tend to consume young kelp plants without restraint and the result is very detrimental to the fishery and other near‐coast resources. On the west coast of Vancouver Island where introduced sea otters have flourished, both kelp beds and the fishery have improved (Watson and Smith 1996). Research over the past few decades has identified the determinant role that sea otters and other keystone species hold in ecosystems (Estes et al. 2011).

The sea otter was native to the entire north Pacific region until Russian explorers discovered its commercial benefits that derive from its fur, the densest possessed by any sea mammal. Its commercial value set off an international fur trade that within a hundred years extirpated this species from vast areas of the Pacific coast (Hatch 2001; Larson et al. 2012). The remnant southern sea otter population, currently located only off the central California coast, is suffering from a variety of diseases associated with a Ecological Baselines 57 degraded coastal environment resulting, in some areas, in inadequate nutrition. Both U.S. subspecies, Enhydra lutris nereis in California and Enhydra lutris kenyoni in southwestern Alaska, are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The principal fuel for most organisms in estuary and near‐shore habitats is detritus made up primarily of plant materials. Removal of the sea otter as the natural predator of the sea urchin increased grazing pressure on the macro algae and resulted in the loss or severe reduction of kelp (Nereocystis) beds along the coast. Restoring the abundance of plant communities can provide the fuel and habitat for restoring near shore and estuary ecosystems (Watson and Smith 1996). Oregon’s kelp forests were mapped in 1912 by the United States Department of Agriculture to evaluate the potential of a potash industry (Cameron 1915). This survey occurred within a few decades of the effective removal of the sea otter from the Oregon coast, and in later decades, as the impact of the sea otter’s absence continued to affect the near shore ecosystem, the kelp beds declined. Much of the area occupied by kelp in 1912 is now nearly or completely devoid of it.

More recently, studies have been undertaken by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) to study, understand and sustainably manage near‐shore areas (cf., Fox, Amend, and Merems, 1999). In studies between 1996 and 1999, the ODFW documented the re‐establishment of healthy kelp populations in Oregon’s waters near Cape Blanco. Recovery of kelp occurred where fishermen were actively harvesting sea urchins. Although direct impacts of herbivores on kelp beds were not examined in this study, the inventory suggests that removal of sea otters, followed by predation by sea urchins, was responsible for kelp losses. Examples from this study and elsewhere suggest the resiliency of kelp and the potential for restoring it and various other species that thrive in its presence. For instance, a massive influx of mature herring or candlefish was reported in 2001 in the mouth of the Rogue River following the restoration of kelp beds. Such observations provide additional evidence of the potential that kelp beds have for restoring populations of lower trophic level fish.

Thus a key to restoring the weir fishery in estuaries and streams is restoring the kelp populations in the near‐shore environment, and the keys to restoring kelp will be reducing grazing pressure from sea urchins by re‐establishing the sea otter, and in other ways allowing kelp beds to feed the system. Today’s near‐shore and estuary ecosystems have been functioning without the sea otter for over one hundred years. Restoring the sea otter to Oregon for the purpose of restoring the natural diversity of the near‐shore and estuary ecosystem may take many years. As it proceeds, it will provide a chance to observe the transition as an extirpated species resumes its role in an ecosystem. These observations will in turn help future efforts to restore the sea otter and other components of a healthy near‐ shore ecosystem in Oregon.

Translocation attempts and sea otter diversity Efforts in the late 1970s to translocate sea otter populations have had varied results. The existing Washington and Vancouver Island populations were successfully translocated from sea otter populations living in Prince William Sound and Amchitka Island in the Aleutians in the 1970s. A similar effort to translocate animals to Cape Arago and Port Orford in southern Oregon from waters around Amchitka Island eventually failed after several years (Jameson et al. 1982). The unsuccessful trans‐location to Oregon raised

58 Ecological Baselines several questions about what went wrong in the Oregon translocation process. One of these questions – Was the Amchitka Island sea otter population of the appropriate sub‐ species? – was investigated in a research project that examined mitochondrial DNA from archaeologically obtained sea otter bones curated in Oregon State University’s anthropology collection. The Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians along with Oregon State University’s Sea Grant Program helped fund genetic analysis of these prehistoric otter bones by Portland State University biologists. The study revealed that the majority of the archaeological specimens tested from sites on the middle and southern Oregon coast had the same mitochondrial DNA signature as the majority of southern sea otters now living in California (Valentine et al. 2008).

Another possible reason for the failure of translocation in Oregon is that only one source population was used, whereas most of the successful trans‐locations, as noted above, involved more than one source population. Using both contemporary and archaeological specimens, Shawn Larson of the Seattle Aquarium examined several DNA micro‐satellites and found that along with losing large numbers of otters, genetic diversity of sea otters declined as a consequence of the fur trade (Larson et al. 2012). It is possible that re‐colonizing Oregon with source populations representing greater diversity would provide the additional genetic diversity that could help a new colony adapt. A third possibility that has been suggested for the failure of the re‐introduction effort of the 1970s is that because young otters learn to prefer certain foods available in their home location, source and target locations should be matched for food resources (Forest and Ivy 2002). If translocation occurs along the Oregon coast, it should be preceded by discussions with coastal people concerning the benefits of successful re‐introduction, specifically the important role that sea otters play in maintaining a healthy ecosystem that includes an enriched fishery.

Estuary history and restoration The Coquille estuary, its ecosystem, and its post‐contact history, provide an excellent example of Oregon’s estuaries. In the early 1800s the Coquille estuary was a broad bay‐like area with very rich bird and marine resources as documented by seven excavations at a large village site near the river’s mouth (Hall 2001). Faunal analysis there documented that sea otters were the second most common sea mammal in the middens, and Byram (2002) recorded 19 fish weir sites in the Coquille estuary.

However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, much of the estuary was diked to facilitate raising of dairy cattle and the river was channeled to prevent flooding. Logging debris added to the damage and restrictions the estuary suffered (Hall 1995). At the mouth, the river was constrained by development in the town of Bandon. The once abundant target fish populations of the weirs became rare. Considerable archaeological research conducted by the Coquille Indian Tribe in conjunction with universities and resource agencies over the past few decades has extended our knowledge of the past environment and its ecology. The goals of the tribe in undertaking these studies with their several partners are both to understand tribal history and to restore the damaged ecosystems:

Our research gives the public stories which help them appreciate the richness and depth of human history on the landscape where they live, work, and recreate...When Ecological Baselines 59

the Coquille people were the sole residents of the valley the environment was vastly different from what it is today...Though heavily used, the abundance of the estuary’s resources was maintained by untold generations of Native communities. Through archaeology and ethnohistoric research we are developing a better understanding of the ways people used estuary resources without diminishing ecological productivity, which in turn gives us a road map for improving our relationship with the ecosystem today. (Ivy and Byram 2001:123)

During the past decade the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has worked to remove some of the dikes that have constrained the river and reduced the size of the estuary. Their goal is to restore the damaged ecosystem. Archaeological work conducted during the restoration has identified many more fish weirs. The next several decades and future research will tell how successful the union of past and future ecosystems can be. Restoration cannot return the estuary and the near‐shore fishery to an exact copy of its pre‐fur trade status, but with re‐introduction of the sea otter, removal of dikes, and renewed respect for native practices, estuaries and the coastal habitats can become healthier and more productive.

References Byram, R. Scott (2002) Brush Fences and Basket Traps: the Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Tidewater Weir Fishing on the Oregon Coast. Ph.D. dissertation in Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene. Cameron, Frank K. (1915) Potash From Kelp. Report No. 100, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington: Government Printing Office Estes, James A. et al. (2011) Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth. Science 333: 301‐306. Forest, Marguerite, and Donald B. Ivy (2002) An Abbreviated Timeline of the Geology and History Supporting the interdependence of Sea Otters, Kelp Forest, and People. In: Changing Landscapes, Sustaining Traditions. Proceedings of the 5th and 6th Annual Coquille Cultural Preservation Conference, pp. 89‐98, Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon. Fox, David, Mark Amend, and Arlene Merems (1999) 1999 Nearshore Rocky Reef Assessment. Final Report for 1999 Grant Contract No. 99‐072. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, 40 pp. Hall, Roberta L. (1984) The Coquille Indians: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Smith, Smith, and Smith Publishing Co., Lake Oswego, Oregon. (Restoration Edition, 1991, Words and Pictures Unlimited, Corvallis, Oregon.) Hall, Roberta L., editor (1995) People of the Coquille Estuary. Words & Pictures Unlimited, Corvallis, Oregon. Hall, Roberta L. (2001) Nah‐so‐mah Village, Viewed Through Its Fauna. Report to the Coquille Indian Tribe and OSU Sea Grant, Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University, Corvallis Hatch, David R. (2002) Elakha: Sea Otters, Native People, and European Colonization in the North Pacific. In: Changing Landscapes; Sustaining Traditions. Proceedings of the fifth and sixth Coquille Cultural Preservation Conferences, edited by Donald B. Ivy and R. Scott Byram. Coquille Indian Tribe, North Bend, Oregon, pp. 79‐88. Ivy, Donald, and Scott Byram (2001) Coquille Cultural Heritage and Wetland Archaeology. In: Enduring Records, the Environmental and Cultural Heritage of Wetlands, edited by Barbara Purdy, pp. 120‐131. Oxbow Books, Oxford, England. Jacobs, Melville (1934) Hanis and Miluk Coosan Texts and Linguistic and Ethnographic Data, Melville Jacobs Collection, Notebook 92‐22, page12, University of Washington Libraries, Seattle.

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Jameson, R.J., K.W. Kenyon, A.M. Johnson and H.M. Wight (1982) History and status of translocated sea otter populations in North America. Wildlife Society Bulletin 10:100‐107. Kenyon, K.W. (1969) The Sea Otter in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. North American Fauna Number 68, United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife. Larson S, Jameson R, Etnier M, Jones T, Hall R (2012) Genetic Diversity and Population Parameters of Sea Otters, Enhydra lutris, before Fur Trade Extirpation from 1741‐1911. PLoS ONE : e32205. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032205 Valentine, Kim, Deborah A. Duffield, Lorelei E. Patrick, David R. Hatch, Virginia L. Butler, Roberta L. Hall, Niles Lehman (2008) Ancient DNA reveals genotypic relationships among Oregon populations of the sea otter (Enhydra lutris). Conservation Genetics 9: 933‐938. Watson, Jane C., T.G. Smith (1996) The effects on sea otters on invertebrate fisheries in British Columbia: a review. Invertebrate Working Papers Reviewed by the Pacific Stock Assessment Review Committee (PSARC) in 1993 and 1994, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Science Branch, Pacific Region, Pacific Biological Station, Nanaimo, British Columbia. Wilkinson, Charles (2010) The People are Dancing Again: A history of the Siletz tribe of western Oregon. University of Washington Press, Seattle, Washington.

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Purple Sea Urchins, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, along the Oregon Coast Thomas A. Ebert, Emeritus Professor, Department of Biology, San Diego State University Sea urchins are common marine animals belonging to a major phylum (Echinodermata) that includes sea cucumbers, sea stars (starfish), brittle stars, and sea lilies. All of these are restricted to marine environments and all share skeletons composed of high magnesium calcite (calcium carbonate). Skeletons are internal so even the spines of sea urchins are covered with tissue. In most echinoderms, sexes are separate and gametes are shed into the sea. There, fertilization takes place and is followed by a planktonic larval stage of varying length. Finally, metamorphosis occurs to form a small individual that looks like a miniature adult. The focus of this review is the common intertidal purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. I’ve been studying these urchins in tide pools, beginning in the 1960’s; all subsequent comments apply to this species and in particular to Oregon. Purple sea urchins are also found in the sub‐tidal zone but no systematic studies have been done there because of the obvious difficulties involved in observing and measuring them. Evaluations of the status of purple sea urchins are based upon whether they have maintained their population at sites where they have previously been observed, and upon estimates of their recruitment. These estimates are based on the ratio between young (small) urchins and older (large) ones.

Thomas A. Ebert Purple sea urchins in a tide pool. 62 Ecological Baselines

Geographic distribution Mortensen (1943) gives the range of purple sea urchins as Cedros Island, Baja California Norte, to at least Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The current northern limit, however, appears to be Torch Bay, (58º 19' 20"N; 136º 47' 51"W), Alaska (Duggins 1981) and the southern limit Los Ojitos (28º 54' 30"N; 114º 27' 16"W), Baja California Norte (J. C. Hernandez, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Island; pers. com.). McCauley and Carey (1967) note that fragments of purple sea urchins occur in native middens at many areas along the coast, which indicates longstanding intertidal populations (see also “Prehistoric Resources” in this set). This species differs from the larger red sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus franciscus) that is primarily subtidal and the focus of an important commercial fishery. General biology of purple sea urchins Purple urchins occur from the intertidal into the subtidal. In the intertidal they inhabit pools, channels, and boulder and cobble fields. They can form cavities in rock substrates using their teeth and spines and can even excavate shallow depressions in granite. Cavities are formed over numerous generations and often a cavity and urchin form a close fit. On all surfaces, urchins use spines to wedge into cracks or crevices and they also attach with tube feet. Purple sea urchins are omnivores though most of the diet is algae, including kelp. In cavities, urchins wait for detritus to wash past and capture this debris with their spines and tube feet. If a particularly large piece of algae or dead fish appears in a pool, sea urchins will move out of cavities to feed. Growth is rapid when sea urchins are small but is dependent on local conditions such as available food, surf conditions, and substrate. Their maximum diameter can exceed 10 cm but such sizes are rare. Life spans are long and may exceed 50 years. Reproduction begins during the second year of life and gamete production increases with size with no indication of decline with age (Ebert et al. 2011). Purple sea urchins tolerate temperatures ranging from 5‐23.5°C but are stressed above 22°C. (Farmanfarmaian and Giese 1963, Ford et al. 1978). They also have a narrow range of salinity tolerance from 80– 110% of seawater (Giese and Farmanfarmaian 1963) although short periods outside this range can be tolerated. Sea urchins have numerous predators. Although sea otters count urchins among prey species, the otters primarily affect sub‐tidal populations, not intertidal ones. Following settlement from the plankton when urchins are only 0.5 mm in diameter, they are prey for Ecological Baselines 63 small crabs, fish, and even flatworms (Rowley 1989). Sea urchins are eaten by sea stars such as the sunflower star Pycnopodia helianthoides (Mauzey et al 1968, Dayton 1975) and if dislodged from the substrate they may fall prey to sea anemones. There also are terrestrial predators that forage in the intertidal during low tide (Carlton and Hodder 2003, Grupe 2006). Raccoons collect sea urchins and open them by breaking out a section of the body wall starting on the urchin's underside. Black oystercatchers prey on sea urchins (Wootton 1995) and sea gulls are minor predators. Other relationships are as competitors for space because they can form dense beds and they also have a number of commensals. There are flatworms (Lehman 1946, Kozloff and Westervelt. 1987) and protozoa (Lynch 1929, 1930) that inhabit the gut and are unable to survive outside of the sea urchin but apparently these neither harm nor benefit the host. Bald sea urchin disease occurs in Oregon but is more common farther south in California. It appears to be bacterial (Gilles and Pearse 1986) and may be a Vibrio or possibly a gliding bacterium (Family Cytophagaceae) that has been identified by Tajima et al. (1997). An interesting final note on disease is, world wide, there are only a few reported cases of neoplasm in sea urchins (www.pathology‐registry.org) and none for purple sea urchins. Mechanisms sea urchins have that prevent tumors and cancers are unknown.

Figure 2. Gonad Index, GI, measurements of purple sea urchins, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, at Sunset Bay, Oregon; data extracted from Boolootian (1966) Figure 25‐28.

For many decades, purple sea urchins have been the focus of studies of early development and cellular processes (e.g. Moore 1930, Keller and Vacquier 1994, Hamdoun et al. 2004, Thurber and Epel 2007). The importance of purple sea urchins is shown in a major project initiated to sequence the entire genome (Sea Urchin Genome Sequencing Consortium 2006). Of much less importance is its use in human consumption. Occasional fisheries have been attempted along the coast (e.g. Kato 1972) but much greater return to the fishery occurs in harvesting the related red sea urchin Strongylocentrotus franciscanus, which is much larger; only the gonads of the urchins are eaten. Although the small size of 64 Ecological Baselines the purple urchin makes it attractive in some cuisines (notably as sushi), its size makes harvesting both difficult and uneconomic. Early work with purple sea urchins Earliest published work on purple sea urchins in Oregon was conducted on gonad development from late 1958 to early 1961 (Boolootian 1966). This work was part of a larger geographic study of the reproductive cycle that also investigated whether there was a geographic pattern in that development. Boolootian listed the Oregon collection site as "Coos Bay" but there is good reason to believe that the actual site was slightly farther south at Sunset Bay in Sunset Bay State Park (Figure 1) because a graduate student at the University of Oregon had been hired to collect sea urchins and had been collecting in Sunset Bay, which is accessible under all weather conditions. By contrast, the breakwater at the entrance to Coos Bay is seldom accessible to intertidal collecting. Boolootian or one of his students dissected sea urchins that were shipped to him and he calculated what is called a "gonad index," which, in one form, is the wet weight of the gonad/total wet weight ×100 (e.g. Giese 1966). This index is expected to indicate the adequacy of the diet of the past 6 months. Original dissection data are not available, so I developed Figure 2 by recapturing data points from Figures 25‐28 in Boolootian (1966). As shown in Figure 2, the gonad index increased over the period of the study. A similar pattern occurred at other northern sites studied by Boolootian as well as seen in a longer data set of gonad dissections from Yankee Point south of Carmel, California (summarized in

Figure 3. Purple sea urchin mean annual gonad index, GI, vs. the annual mean Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) from 1954 to 1963 at Yankee Point (south of Carmel), California. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/ people/ klaus.wolter /MEI/table.html; negative values of MEI indicate La Niña conditions and positive values El Niño conditions.

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Boolootian 1966). This pattern at Yankee Point (Figure 3) was associated with ocean conditions as currently measured by the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI; Wolter and Timlin 1993, 1998). Increases in reproduction are associated with the cooler waters produced during a La Niña phase (negative MEI) and reproduction decreases with El Niño (positive MEI). However, such relationships had not been recognized at the time that research was being done in the 1950s and 1960s.

Figure 4. Gonad Index, GI, measurements (dry weights) of purple sea urchins, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, at Boiler Bay and Yaquina Head, Oregon; data extracted from Gonor 1973 Figure 1.

J. Gonor worked with purple sea urchins at intertidal locations along the central Oregon coast during the late 1960s and early 1970s, focusing on reproductive cycles and temperature tolerance. A gonad index was used for part of the reproductive studies but measurements were based on dry weights rather than wet weights, which others (e.g., Giese 1966) used. For Boiler Bay and Yaquina Head, the gonad index changed from 1968 through 1970 (Figure 4) but the pattern did not track changes in ocean conditions. The Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) was weakly negative in 1968, positive in 1969, negative in 1970 and strongly negative in 1971. Negative values of the index indicate La Niña conditions, which for the Sunset Bay data as well as Yankee Point data were associated with good gonad development, so 1969 should have been a poor year for development at Boiler Bay and 1971 should have been best. This, however, was not the case. For Yaquina Head, gonad development in 1970 was better than 1969, which follows the MEI, but in 1971 gonad development appears to be poorer than expected. There may, however, be methodological problems with the manner in which data were gathered and analyzed (cf. Ebert et al 2011); alternatively, other environmental conditions that were not recorded could have affected development 66 Ecological Baselines

Figure 5. Internal body temperatures of purple sea urchins, 0.3 m above datum, at Boiler Bay, OR (Gonor 1968) following exposure from the falling tide; a: 16– 18 May 1968 with water temperature 12.0°–12.8° C; b: 10‐15 June 1968 water temp. 9.4°–14.4° C; Samples based on N approx. 30; upper and lower limits are maximum and minimum observed measurements. Note: sea urchins in some microsites did not show high internal temperatures. Because Oregon is towards the northern end of the intertidal distribution of purple sea urchins, it would be expected that thermal stress would not be very important in the intertidal but this is not the case. Thermal stress for intertidal species is not a simple function of latitude. The tidal wave along the Pacific coast of North America sweeps from south to north and so low tides occur earlier in the south where the lowest summer tides occur before sun rise. Farther north, extreme low tides can occur mid morning, so thermal stress may be greater in the north (Helmuth et al. 2002). Although the lethal upper limit for S. purpuratus is about 24° C (Farmanfarmaian and Giese 1963), for short periods individuals can tolerate higher temperatures. Gonor (1968) measured internal body temperatures for intertidal urchins (Figure 5) and three to five hours of elevated temperature can be fatal. For example, a sample of 27 individuals at Boiler Bay, OR, with internal temperatures above 26° C, was taken back to Hatfield Marine Laboratory in Newport and held in running sea water where all died within 24 hours (Gonor 1968). There also was substantial mortality in the field at this time. It is clear that occasionally weather and tide conditions are such that heat stress in the intertidal is sufficient to lead to mortality, but how frequently these events occur is unknown. Also unknown is the severity of these events given that stress is highly dependent on microsites occupied by sea urchins. Growth, size and recruitment I began demographic work on intertidal purple sea urchin populations in Oregon in 1962 at Sunset Bay and have continued to the present (Ebert 1965, 1967, 1968, 1980, 1983, 2004, 2007, 2010). Some intertidal purple sea urchins in Oregon have maximum sizes that are much larger than have been observed at other places along the Pacific coast (Figure 6A). The southern site was Punta Baja, Baja California Norte, and the northern site was Grant Bay, British Columbia. Oregon sites include Cape Blanco, between north and middle cove of Cape Arago, Sunset Bay, Yaquina Head, and Boiler Bay (Figure 1). The largest individuals have been found at Sunset Bay in an area called the Boulder Field (Ebert 1968 1980, 1983, 2010) but other sites near the Boulder Field have much smaller maximum Ecological Baselines 67 diameters (Figure 6A). Differences are related to growth (Ebert 1968, 1980, 2004), which is associated with microsite differences in available food (Ebert 1968).

Figure 6. Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. A: Maximum diameter in samples measured along the Pacific coast of North America. Dashed lines a and b are Cape Mendocino and Point Conception, respectively; B: Fraction of Age ≤ 1 year individuals in size distributions. A reverse pattern to maximum diameter is shown by recruitment to populations (Figure 6B). Recruitment evaluations are based on the number of individuals sufficiently large that they can be seen and collected with unaided vision in proportion to the abundance of larger individuals. Although smaller individuals appear in collections, the ‘countable’ size is about 0.5 cm. Sea urchins with diameters of about 1.5 cm are = 1 year old, and the fraction of the population around this modal value provides a measure of recruitment. Areas studied in Oregon from 1985‐1987 had very low recruitment values, whereas areas farther south in California had substantial levels of recruitment. The negative relationship between diameter and recruitment suggests that sea urchins in Oregon have lower mortality rates compared with the regions just to the north of Point Conception, California, but more detailed analyses are required to substantiate this conclusion. In general, low levels of recruitment in Oregon have been true for many decades but there have been occasional important settlement events (Ebert 1983). The details of settlement still are unknown but current focus is on water motion (inshore and offshore currents), major events such as El Niño and La Niña, and coastal topography interacting with the timing of spawning events. Studying such interactions is very difficult because at 68 Ecological Baselines

present there is no way to track sea urchin larvae from where they were produced, through the plankton, and finally to their place of settlement. Following spawning, settlement takes place from late spring into early summer but generally appears to be confined to a short period of time. Sea urchin size at settlement is 0.05 cm, thus considerably below the resolution of collecting with unaided vision. Consequently, when samples are gathered during the summer, settlement occurring during

that year tends to be missed but recruitment to the population is seen the following summer as individuals that have grown to 1‐2 cm. I saw large numbers of very small urchins nestled among spines of large urchins in 1963 before making collections for size‐frequency Ecological Baselines 69 analysis. The first sample for size‐frequency analysis was gathered in August 1964 and I have continued to make them at Sunset Bay sites, sometimes on an annual basis but occasionally with gaps of 5 or more years. Data for purple sea urchins in Sunset Bay’s Boulder Field (Figures 7 and 8) show a pattern similar to other sites on the south side of the Bay with respect to recruitment events, but at Boulder Field there appears to have been faster growth resulting in larger mean and maximum sizes. Major settlement events are unusual at Sunset Bay and the event of 1963 was the largest in the period from 1963 to 1995. Based on the position of modes in 1971, 1993 and 1994, substantial settlement took place in 1970, 1991 and 1993. Most years showed a few new recruits but in some years the data did not show any new individuals added to the population.

Figure 9. Growth of Strongylocentrotus purpuratus at Gregory Point, Oregon, from 2008–2009; A: data points of change in diameter, ΔD, as a function of size at time of tagging, Δt; fitted line is the Tanaka function using parameters in Table 1 and Eq.1; B: Growth curve using parameters in Table 1 and Eq. 2. There are problems with accurate measurement of sea urchins because calipers must be positioned between spines and so measurement errors can be greater than growth, 70 Ecological Baselines particularly for large individuals (Ebert 2004). I have studied growth using tagged individuals and early efforts used invasive tags of monofilament threaded through the body wall. Colored pieces of vinyl tubing on the monofilament allowed individuals to be identified (Ebert 1965, 1967, 1968).

The current method of tagging is with chemicals such as the antibiotic tetracycline (e.g. Ebert 1975, 2010) but other chemical fluorochromes such as calcein also work very well (e.g. Ellers and Johnson 2009). Tetracycline as well as other fluorochromes bind with calcium ions and so can become incorporated into the skeleton as growth occurs. After some time period, such as a year, sea urchins can be collected and skeletons cleaned with sodium hypochlorite bleach to remove soft tissue. Tetracycline or other fluorochrome tags are revealed by viewing under ultraviolet illumination and growth increments measured. Growth increments are measured in jaws (demipyramids) of Aristotle's lantern and then converted to growth of the entire test. Data gathered at Gregory Point from 2008 to 2009 show growth increments (Figure 9A) and the expected pattern of decreasing annual growth as the urchin becomes larger. Ecological Baselines 71

Various growth models can be used to analyze such data and the fitted line of ΔD vs. original diameter, Dt, used the Tanaka function. Details of the Tanaka function are shown in Box 1.

Means of size distributions at Gregory Point (Table 2) provide a range of estimates of M and the annual survival probability, e‐M. The mean value of M was 0.167 yr‐1 so the estimate of annual survival is 0.85 and, using Eq. 5, 5% of the population is expected to be equal to or older than 18 or about 20 years. For comparison, the mean diameter of all of the Sunset Bay size data (Figures 6 and 7) is 6.220 cm and with the growth parameters in Table 1, M = 0.08 yr‐1, annual survival was 0.923 and so 5% of the population is expected to have been equal to or older than 37 or about 40 years.

Parameter Estimate ASE. Param/ASE Lower <95%> Upper

F 0.626040 0.080334 7.792942 0.466367 0.785713

D 2.933126 0.071017 41.301725 2.791972 3.074280

A 0.185446 0.019945 9.297702 0.145802 0.225089 Table 1. Estimated Tanaka growth function parameters for purple sea urchins Strongylocentrotus purpuratus at Gregory Point, Oregon, from 2008–2009; Δt = 1 year; N = 90, r2 = 0.90; ASE is asymptotic standard error

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Year Sample Mean dia. M Annual 5% older (cm) survival rate than 2007 1 5.245 0.154 0.857 19 yr 2008 1 4.445 0.257 0.773 12 2 5.256 0.153 0.858 20 2009 1 5.855 0.103 0.902 29 Mean 0.167 0.846 18

Table 2. Estimates of survival and mortality of purple sea urchins at Gregory Point based on size distributions gathered from 2007–2009.

Conclusions The overall picture that emerges for intertidal purple sea urchins in Oregon is that they have infrequent recruitment and may suffer from infrequent mass mortality events as shown by Gonor (1968). Growth is slow in Sunset Bay (Ebert 1968, 2010) and life span is estimated to be long. The sources of larvae that settle along the Oregon coast are unknown but possibly are hundreds of kilometers away. Because sea urchin larvae may spend months in the plankton, reproduction at a site is very unlikely to contribute to settlement at that site. This has important implications for any discussions of marine protected areas, and particularly for evaluation of the effects of establishing a marine protected area. It means that the effects of establishing a protected area could have positive effects on distant sea urchin colonies. Additionally, large numbers of individuals of a species at a site does not mean that they came from reproduction at that site or suggest anything about conditions at that site. Indeed, for purple sea urchins it is very unlikely that any came from a local spawning event. The same would be true for other species with planktonic larvae. Clearly, all such species’ intertidal settlements have the potential to impact all others; ocean’s living species truly do make a global web. Thus, a marine reserve may be a good place for settlement or a good place for producing larvae that settle elsewhere, or it could be a place where reproduction seldom contributes to settlement anywhere because larvae nearly always are advected far off shore and currents never bring them back to the rocky intertidal. It is nature’s abundance – its over‐production of new offspring – that makes the system work. Given the occurrence of general warming of the ocean and increases in air temperatures, we are led to expect that thermal stress will increase. This in turn could increase mortality of purple sea urchins in those intertidal areas that experience rising temperatures. At present there is no way of predicting what the temperature changes will do to overall settlement success or to growth. Given the long life‐span that sea urchins have, generation times are long and, accordingly, rates of evolutionary change are expected to be relatively slow. If evolutionary changes cannot keep pace with changes in environmental stresses, it is likely that local distributions will shift down in the intertidal zone, and geographic ranges will shift north.

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Acknowledgements Field assistants (in alphabetical order) were: C. Ebert, L. Ebert, T. Ebert, J. Hernández, B. Miller, and M. Russell. Funding was from the Ocean Sciences Division Biological Oceanography of the US National Science Foundation (grants OCE 84‐01415 and OCE‐ 0623934). All of this help and assistance is gratefully acknowledged. References Boolootian, R. A. 1966. Reproductive physiology. pp 561–613 In: R. A. Boolootian (ed) Physiology of Echinodermata. Wiley Interscience, New York Carlton, J.T. and J. Hodder 2003. Maritime mammals: terrestrial mammals as consumers in marine intertidal communities. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 256:271‐286 Dayton, P.K. 1975 Experimental evaluation of ecological dominance in a rocky intertidal community. Ecol Monogr 45:137‐159 Duggins, D. O 1981. Interspecific facilitation in a guild of benthic marine herbivores. Oecologia 48:157–163 Ebert, T. A. 1965. A technique for the individual marking of sea urchins. Ecology 46: 193‐194. Ebert, T. A. 1967. Negative growth and longevity in the purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (Stimpson). Science 157: 557‐558. Ebert, T. A. 1968. Growth rates of the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus related to food availability and spine abrasion. Ecology 49: 1075‐1091. Ebert, T. A. 1980. Relative growth of sea urchin jaws: an example of plastic resource allocation. Bull. Mar. Sci. 30: 467‐474. Ebert, T. A. 1983. Recruitment in echinoderms. pp 169‐203 In: M. Jangoux and J. M. Lawrence (eds.) Echinoderm Studies Vol. 1. A. A. Balkema, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Ebert, T.A. 1999. Plant and Animal Populations. Methods in Demography. Academic Press, San Diego. Ebert, T. A. 2004. Shrinking sea urchins and the problems of measurement. pp 321‐325. In: T. Heinzeller and J. Nebelsick [eds.] Echinoderms: München. Taylor & Francis Group, London. Ebert, T. A. 2007. Growth and survival of postsettlement sea urchins. pp. 95‐134 In: J. M. Lawrence [ed.] Edible sea urchins: Biology and ecology. Developments in Aquaculture and Fisheries Science 37. Elsevier, Amsterdam. Ebert, T. A. 2010. Demographic patterns of the purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus along a latitudinal gradient, 1985–87. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 406: 105–120. doi: 10.3354/meps08547 Ebert, T. A., J. C. Hernandez, and M. P. Russell 2011 Problems of the gonad index and what can be done: Analysis of the purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Marine Biology 153: 47–58. DOI 10.1007/s00227‐010‐1541‐2 Ellers, O. and A. S. Johnson 2009. Polyfluorochrome marking slows growth only during the marking month in the green sea urchin Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis. Invertebrate Biology 128(2): 126– 144. Farmanfarmaian, A. 1966. The respiratory physiology of echinoderms. pp 245–265 In: R. A. Boolootian (ed) Physiology of Echinodermata. Wiley Interscience, New York Farmanfarmaian, A. and A. C. Giese 1963. Thermal tolerance and acclimation in the western purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Physiol Zoöl. 36:237–243 74 Ecological Baselines

Ford, R. F., D. G.Foreman, K. J. Grubbs, C. D. Kroll, and D. G. Watts 1978. Effects of thermal effluent on benthic marine invertebrates determined from long‐term simulation studies. Energy and environmental stress in aquatic systems. CONF‐771114. In: Thorp JH, Gibbons JW (eds), Tech Info Center US Dept Energy, Washington. pp 546–568. Giese, A. C. 1966. On the biochemical constitution of some echinoderms. In: Boolootian, R. A. (ed) Physiology of Echinodermata. Interscience Publishers (Wiley), New York pp 757–796. Giese, A. C. and A. Farmanfarmaian. 1963. Resistance of the purple sea urchin to osmotic stress. Biol. Bull. 124(2): 182‐192. Gilles, K.W. and J.S. Pearse. 1986. Disease in sea urchins Strongylocentrotus purpuratus: experimental infection and bacterial virulence. Diseases of Aquatic Organisms 1: 105‐114. Gonor, J. J. 1968. Temperature relations of central Oregon marine intertidal invertebrates: a pre‐ publication technical report to the Office Naval Res. Dept. Oceanogr, Oregon St Univ. Data Rpt No. 34. Ref. 68‐38. http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/dspace/handle/1957/6591 Gonor, J. J. 1973. Reproductive cycles in Oregon populations of the echinoid, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (Stimpson). I. Annual gonad growth and ovarian gametogenic cycles. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol. 12: 45‐64. Grupe, B.M. 2006. Purple sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) in and out of pits: the effects of microhabitat on population structure, morphology, growth, and mortality. MS thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR Hamdoun, A., Cherr, G.N., Roepke, T. A., Foltz, K.R. and D. Epel, 2004. Activation of Multidrug Efflux Transporter Activity at Fertilization in Sea Urchin Embryos (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus). Developmental Biology. 276:413‐423 Helmuth B, Harley CDG, Halpin PM, O’Donnell M, Hofmann GE, Blanchette CA 2002. Climate change and latitudinal patterns of intertidal thermal stress. Science 298:1015–1017 Kato, S. 1972. Sea urchins: a new fishery develops in California. Mar. Fish. Rev. 34(9‐10): 23‐30. Keller, S. H. and V. D. Vacquier 1994. The isolation of acrosome‐reaction‐inducing glycoproteins from sea urchin egg jelly. Developmental Biology 162: 304‐312 Kozloff, E.N. and C.A. Westervelt. 1987. Redescription of Syndesmis echinorum François, 1886 (Turbellaria: Neorhabdocoela: Umagillidae), with comments on distinctions between Syndesmis and Syndisyrinx. The Journal of Parasitology 73:184‐193. Lehman, H.E. 1946. A histological study of Syndisyrinx franciscanus gen. et sp. non., an endoparasitic rhabdocoel of the sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus franciscanus. The Biological Bulletin (Woods Hole, Mass.) 90:295‐311. Lynch, J. E. 1929. Studies on the ciliates from the intestine of Strongylocentrotus I. Entorhipidium gen. nov. Univ. Calif. Publ. Zool. 33(3): 27‐56. Lynch, J. E. 1930. Studies on the ciliates from the intestine of Strongylocentrotus II. Lechriopyla mystax, gen. nov., sp. nov. Univ. Calif. Publ. Zool. 33(16): 307‐350. Mauzey KP, Birkeland C, Dayton PK (1968) Feeding behavior of asteroids and escape responses of their prey in the Puget Sound region. Ecology 49:603‐619 McCauley, J. E. and A. G. Carey, Jr. 1967. Echinoidea of Oregon. J. Fish. Res. Bd. Canada. 24(6): 1385‐ 1401. Moore, A. R. 1930. Fertilization and development without membrane formation in the egg of the sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Protoplasma 9: 9–17. Ecological Baselines 75

Mortensen, Th (1943) A monograph of the echinoidea. Vol. III. Pt. 3. Camarodonta II, Echinidae, Strongylocentrotidae, Parasaleniidae, Echinometridae. CA Reitzel, Copenhagen, Denmark Rowley, R. J. 1989. Settlement and recruitment of sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus spp.) in a sea‐ urchin barren ground and a kelp bed: are populations regulated by settlement or post‐settlement processes?. Mar. Biol. 100: 485‐494. Sea Urchin Genome Sequencing Consortium 2006. The genome of the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Science 314: 941–952 plus related articles in the same issue. Tajima T, Hirano T, Motohiro S, Ezura Y (1997) Isolation and pathogenicity of the causative bacterium of spotting disease of sea urchin Strongylocentrotus intermedius. Fisheries Sci. 63: 249‐252. Tanaka M (1988) Eco‐physiological meaning of parameters of ALOG growth curve. Publ Amakusa Mar Biol Lab 9:103–106 Thurber, R.V. and Epel, D. 2007. Apoptosis in early development of the sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Developmental Biology 303: 336‐346 Wolter, K., and M.S. Timlin, 1993. Monitoring ENSO in COADS with a seasonally adjusted principal component index. pp 52‐57 In: Proc. of the 17th Climate Diagnostics Workshop, Norman, OK, NOAA/N MC/CAC, NSSL, Oklahoma Clim. Survey, CIMMS and the School of Meteor., Univ. of Oklahoma. Wolter, K., and M.S. Timlin, 1998. Measuring the strength of ENSO ‐ how does 1997/98 rank? Weather 53: 315‐324. Wootton, J.T. 1995. Effects of birds on sea urchins and algae: a lower‐intertidal trophic cascade. Ecoscience 2:321‐328

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Reflections on Baselines and Restoration Roberta L. Hall, Emeritus Professor, Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University

Our goal in preparing this report is to provide historical reviews of several coastal species for natural resource managers who are charged with protecting coastal habitats and the wildlife that contribute to Oregon’s ecological and economic health. In doing this report, we had to consider some of the factors responsible for decline during Oregon’s historic period. This project has made us painfully aware of the tremendous responsibility that we place on these coastal managers. Furthermore, it seems vital to us for the public to participate fully in the work of protection and restoration. What we learned We began the report by naming species known to be common before the Northwest coast began feeling the impact of Europeans. Given geological and climatic variation over decades and centuries, Oregon’s native people developed ways to enhance the Oregon coast’s abundance. They achieved resilience by using diverse coastal and land resources. Diversifying the economy is a lesson contemporary culture could benefit from adopting; our economic system rewards individuals who specialize. Our chapter on salmon reviewed changes in salmon numbers that have both natural and human causes. For the past century, both the general public and biological scientists have recognized problems with the fishery and have tried possible solutions. All have been discouraged by some of the results but lessons have been learned. Because salmon straddle several ecosystems throughout their complex life cycle, they best exemplify the inter‐connectedness of ecosystems. The public must recognize that human structures and activities are part of the entire ecosystem and thus contribute to ecosystem degradation that in turn affects our favorite resources. We will have to alter some of our activities in order to achieve a healthy ecosystem for salmon. Sea otter extirpation was due to international competition and over harvesting. Ambitious attempts to restore Oregon sea otters in the 1970s did not succeed, but should not be abandoned. Early in 2012, I examined the skeleton of a juvenile sea otter that died in 1973, three days after it had been transported from the coast of Amchitka Island to waters near Port Orford. There were no obvious clues in the skeleton to tell why it died. I found myself asking whether its mother was among the animals captured and removed to Oregon. Did the juvenile otter know where to find food in its new environment? What can be done differently in future translocations to help the otters survive? Public education about the sea otter’s role in the ecosystem, utilizing comparative studies done in Alaska and on Vancouver Island, could help immensely. The case of the purple sea urchin is fascinating. Purple sea urchins are not harvested commercially but are at the mercy of ocean currents, storms, and temperature. Nature’s usual solution to the hazard of chance removals of a colony or an entire species is numbers. Are current numbers sufficient to protect this and other species against ocean forces and increases in sea temperature? What can be done to curb increases in sea temperature? 78 Ecological Baselines

We briefly reviewed major restoration projects in the Salmon River and Coquille River estuary systems. The very heartening success in these two examples appeared to rely in great measure on high levels of cooperation among scientists in local, state and federal agencies (Hoobyar 1973) and between the Coquille Tribe and the federal government (Roy Lowe, personal communication, May 2011). Partnerships take time and are worth the effort. Another paradigm In mid‐summer 2011, I was captivated by reading a paper in the prestigious journal Science that goes much further than our Oregon data alone can take us in understanding how ecological systems are damaged and how they might be repaired (Estes et al. 2011). Written by 24 scientists, the review article synthesizes data concerning the most significant and pervasive influence that humans have had on nature. Their scientific conclusion as to what has been the single most important destructive influence? They point the finger squarely at removal of “large apex consumers,” species that are at the top of their various ecosystems’ food chains.

This article, “Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth,” based on numerous independent studies conducted over a few decades, should be a game‐changer. In a perfect world, a paper this comprehensive would lead to programs to restore keystone species. The authors present the case that when apex consumers are removed from a balanced ecosystem a cascade of effects leaves the landscape impoverished. Using diverse apex consumers as examples – the sea otter, sea star, largemouth bass, and large reef fish in freshwater and marine environments; and the arctic fox, jaguar, wolf, and wildebeast in terrestrial habitats – they described and illustrated a sequence of effects that follow such removals.

The review offers clear illustrations and significant details and references. The authors argue that the process of ecological depletion, beginning with loss of an apex consumer and proceeding to undermine the entire ecosystem, disrupts the interactions among species in the ecosystem web. Removing apex consumers forces ecosystem changes that travel (or cascade) down the food chain even to the lowliest species. This paradigm contradicts a prominent opposite view that sees “large animals in general, and apex consumers in particular, as ecological passengers riding atop the trophic pyramid but having little impact on the structure below” (Estes 2011: 306). By contrast, apex consumers are, in fact, instrumental in maintaining other species and a functioning ecosystem.

Most pertinent to this report is the example of the sea otter. The loss of this keystone species is illustrated in the Estes et al. paper, page 302, where drawings show a sea floor community rich in organisms in a site that has sea otters as well as an impoverished sea floor community at a site that lost its otters. A chart on page 304 in the Estes et al. paper portrays the series of interactions that occur when sea otters are removed.

Ecosystem restoration Though new, the paradigm on the role of apex consumers reinforces a major theme of past decades concerning the integrity of the ecosystem. We have long known that every single species plays a role in maintaining its whole ecosystem; by affecting one you affect all. This understanding, of course, dates back at least to 1859 when Charles Darwin provided examples of it in On the Origin of Species (Darwin 1859). Now, Oregon and federal Ecological Baselines 79 resource agencies and scientists are working to understand and protect species, habitats and ecosystems of the Oregon coast. The review by Estes et al. of trophic cascades contributes a clear additional perspective for agencies that are working to document, understand and support efforts to restore depleted resources and ecosystems.

Our goal here is to encourage more observations, more programs of renewal, and greater education of the public, which must learn that without a healthy ecosystem, there is no hope for a healthy, resilient economy. With these possibilities and wishes for a healthier coastal ecosystem, we offer this report.

References Darwin, Charles (1859) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Murray, London. Estes, James A. et al. (2011) Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth. Science 333: 301‐306. Hoobyar, Paul (2007) Vital Linkages Learned at Salmon River. Oregon Sea Grant, ORESU‐G‐07‐003.