If Valentine’s Day had you wondering where all the good fish in the sea have been hiding, you can trust they will come out for meal time at the Oak Harbor Marina.

Standing on the dock, Assistant Harbormaster Alyce Henry dug a scoop into a bucket of salmon feed before tossing the small brown marbles into the underwater cage in front of her, waiting to see some activity.

Beneath the metal net and the dark water surface, one could catch flashes of a few striped, 4-inch-long coho salmon as they made a dart for the food. After a few quick splashes, the fish hid again from sight, joining 15,000 of their kin in waiting for the next serving of food to rain on them.

While it’s not the chaotic scene one would expect considering the pen population, staff and volunteers have seen far less activity during the early weeks of the salmon’s stay. In 2022, during the first 30 days of the freshly revived salmon rearing project, the fish were so inactive that volunteers and staff had to inspect the net to check for any holes, thinking they escaped.

Much to their surprise, Henry recounted, none of the salmon had left.

Since the city’s marina brought back the salmon rearing project after a decade-long hiatus, community members of all ages are welcome to help keep the salmon fed and learn a thing or two about this keystone species.

The salmon rearing project debuted in the marina in 1982, releasing nearly one million salmon into Oak Harbor Bay until the program was halted in 2013 because of state budget constraints, according to the program’s webpage.

The marina revived the program with the help of the Whidbey Puget Sound Anglers and seasoned recreational fishermen like Tracy Loescher after the city and the local schools showed interest. It later got greenlit by the state, according to Loescher, who also supports the program as a volunteer.

Every year, the marina takes approximately 30,000 juvenile salmon and temporarily houses them in two 7-foot-deep pens, which were built by volunteers. These fish spent the first 15 months of their life in a freshwater pen at the Marblemount Fish Hatchery in Skagit County, Henry said.

From January to May, volunteers and marina staff take care of the salmon until they are old enough to be released into the sea. From 9 to 10 a.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, anyone can swing by and help feed the fish.

Henry said she has been happy to see more community involvement this year, with larger groups of people coming to sprinkle or toss breakfast to the salmon and observe them up close.

“I’ve seen adults light up as much as children during feeding, especially as they get more active,” she said.

More visitors, including young field trip groups, are expected to come in April, when the salmon are larger and less shy.

As Henry and Loescher explained, the salmon tend to be less active during their first weeks in the pens. This is because they are not used to being in saltwater, and they are more afraid of predators. Shadows, movements and even human voices can discourage them from swimming close to the surface, leading them to opt instead to wait for their food to fall deeper in the pen. Sunny days, Henry said, also seem to mean reduced activity.

Luckily for the fish, their temporary housing is predator-proof as they are entirely surrounded by nets. Regardless, the groups of hungry seagulls that wait on the wooden edges of the pen aren’t after them. As volunteers toss the food into the enclosure, the birds pounce on whatever pellet does not land into the water.

“They’re the clean-up crew,” Loescher joked.

The only intruder that makes it inside is the stickleback, a spiky fish that measures less than three inches in length. Once they are inside, Henry said, they can’t leave or get removed.

“They’re not fun to get out of the pen,” she said. “We were trying to fish them out at one point, and we ended up spiking ourselves more than it was worth.”

In the past, Loescher estimated, the number of sticklebacks sharing a roof with the 15,000 salmon have reached the hundreds. Because of their spikes, the salmon don’t seem enticed to eat them, though the salmon have been observed to push them to the side when it’s time to eat.

The salmon mortality rates in the pens are also low, averaging 25 to 35 deaths every year, Loescher said, attributing the deaths to natural causes.

The salmon will be released with a ceremony in May, Henry said, though a date has yet to be decided. If they’re kept for longer, she said, the males might not be able to reproduce.

In the best possible scenario, 3,000 adults weighing about eight pounds will return to the bay in three years, attracted by the shallow waters of the bay that offer an ideal habitat for organisms to grow, drawing in schools of herring and anchovies that in turn are eaten by the salmon, Henry said.

“The biologists say that we’re lucky if we get 8% to 10% back,” Loescher said. “We may not get that many, but we’ll take what we can get, because everything out there is after them, including us.”

Some salmon might even venture back into the marina, where they’re spotted by divers who are busy cleaning boats, Henry said.

Some salmon are chipped for tracking purposes, and can be identified by the clipping on their fins. If caught, the chip can be extracted and sent to scientists who will collect data about the fish’s journey, Loescher said.

The goal of the salmon rearing project, Loscher said, is not just to provide an educational opportunity for children and adults, but also to support the endangered southern resident killer whales. Though the southern residents prey almost exclusively on Chinook salmon, they also eat other salmon like coho, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Furthermore, he said, introducing more salmon into Puget Sound also helps keep the tradition of recreational salmon fishing alive. Eventually, the hope is to get permission from the state to expand the program to bring back the Chinook salmon into the marina, though they are particularly regulated due to their endangered status, he said.

In 2001, according to a News-Times story published that same year, the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife stopped net-pen rearing of Chinook salmon around the state. One of the reasons was fear that the hatchery Chinook would “dilute” the wild Chinook gene pool by mating with their wild relatives.

People interested in learning more about the salmon rearing project and volunteering opportunities can call the marina office at 360-279-4575.

(Photo by Luisa Loi) At left, Tracy Loescher and Alyce Henry observe one of the pens to spot any of the 15,000 salmon hiding under the water’s surface.

(Photo by Luisa Loi) The water splashes as a juvenile salmon catches a pellet of feed.

(Photo by Luisa Loi) Alyce Henry tosses food to 15,000 hungry juvenile cohos. People are invited to come to the marina to feed the fish from 9 to 10 a.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.