Cutting Southcentral boaters' hydrocarbon pollution by offering discounts

Boaters from Homer to the Mat-Su can help protect salmon and other aquatic creatures while nabbing discounts from popular businesses.

A pilot program launched this spring is an offshoot of Cook Inletkeeper's Clean Boating program that began in the Mat-Su five years ago.

"It all started with oil and gas pollution in Big Lake," said Heather Leba, director of the group's Clean Boating Discount Program." State Department of Environmental Conservation water-quality testing in 2006 determined Big Lake was an "impaired water body" due to oil and gas pollution, exceeding levels allowed under the Clean Water Act.

"People were upset and shocked, so the community came together and developed an action plan, and within it was a stipulation for education and outreach. That's how Cook Inletkeeper got involved," she added.

In times of heavy recreational boating, large amounts of oil and gas pollution are emitted, primarily from older, 2-stroke engines and concentrated around boat launches.

"Pollution stays in the water column for a few days and can evaporate over time," Leba explained. "But if you have constant boat traffic over holiday weekends, or if the weather is really good, that pollution persists and can then start to harm aquatic life."

Other DEC "water bodies of concern" include the Little Susitna River, due to high levels of turbidity. The influx of silt and other particulate matter can make it difficult for salmon and other fish to breathe.

The popular Deshka River is also being monitored.

"Everybody loves to fish king salmon on the Deshka and there are a lot of recreational and commercial guiding boats there. That river is not impaired, it's just a river to watch, so we've been doing outreach to increase knowledge about oil and gas pollution in the Valley," Leba said.

According to Cook Inletkeeper's website: "Water quality studies done on the Little Susitna River from 2007-2011 found that about 40 percent of the motors on the river were older 2-stroke engines. Engine horsepower on the Little Su ranges widely, from 25 to 225 horsepower, averaging 65 horsepower across all engine types. Big Lake water-quality studies as recent as 2013 showed that approximately 13 percent of boats used carbureted 2-stroke engines. Though that may not seem like a lot of boats, 2-stroke engines contribute approximately half of the petroleum hydrocarbons in the lake. Boaters typically use higher horsepower engines on Big Lake, averaging about 90 horsepower across both engine types."

To get people engaged in protecting local lakes, rivers and coastal waters, Inletkeeper has partnered with local businesses to offer incentives for becoming cleaner boaters. The outcome is the Clean Boating Discount Cards program.

To participate, boaters take a free and fun online boating course through the Boat US Foundation. That's followed by a quick survey, and then simply signing up for the discounts.

"I get all that information and then mail you a packet with your card and the list of businesses, more discount coupons," Leba said.

Fifteen businesses have signed on so far, and each has the freedom to participate in ways that work for them. Sportsman's Warehouse, for example, gives 10 percent discounts on all fishing department items in stores statewide. Denali Brewing Co., Cabela's, Kaladi Brothers and NAPA offer various coupons, and the list goes on.

Leba said boaters are increasingly aware that minimizing oil and gas pollution will result in healthier salmon and cleaner waters throughout the Inlet.

"(But) I think hydrocarbon pollution is not going to go away unless 2-stroke engines are either banned or become obsolete."

Learn more about the program at the Cook Inletkeeper website.

A mighty wind

Chinook salmon are returning to the Yukon River, and while low numbers mean no commercial fishery again this year, the king counts are more encouraging,

Even with 55 years of Yukon data, it's a tough run to track because the timing is so unpredictable, said Phil Mundy, director of NOAA Fisheries Auke Bay Lab in Juneau.  Mundy has studied Alaska salmon since the 1970s, but said it was Yukon elders who taught him how to fine-tune the run timing.

"They told me 'the wind blows the fish in the river — everyone knows that, young man.' And I wondered how that works," he said, adding that Inlet fishermen told him the same thing about sockeye salmon.

"They said, 'it's when the wind blows and you get the biggest tide closest to July 17. Everyone knows that.' But we couldn't figure out exactly how the wind was doing what it did. I didn't think the fish put up their dorsal fin like a sail to blow into the river, but there had to be something because they seemed to be right," Mundy mused.

"I used to count fish from airplanes, and I've seen this at Cook Inlet and at Bristol Bay where you get the river water piling up against the marine water on the river plume. Then you'll see the salmon weaving in and out along the edge of the front between the freshwater and the saltwater. They will pile up if there is no wind to mix that fresh and saltwater to make it brackish. They will mass up on that front until some other trigger, which we probably don't understand, sends them all in."

In 2006, Mundy saw a scientific article that focused on how salmon make the change from freshwater to saltwater and vice versa.

"There's this thing called a calcium ion switch, and it is triggered by alternating exposure to different salinities," he explained. "Young salmon can't swim straight into saltwater because it will kill them, and it's the same for adults in the ocean returning to their freshwater home streams. They have to have alternating exposure to different salinities."

(Predicting salmon run timing on the Yukon River)

At the Yukon, Mundy said the wind mixing the water even trumps early ice melts as the best indicator of the salmon arrivals. He added that today, satellites from the Alaska Ocean Observing System make the salmon run predictions easier and more reliable.

Laine Welch is a Kodiak-based commercial fishing columnist. Contact her at msfish@alaskan.com.