Good Works

Volunteers study aquatic reserve ecosystem off Protection Island

Uninhabited land provides data for migratory birds

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Off the coast of Cape George is a 370-acre island, uninhabited by humankind, teeming with wildlife. It only takes a quick boat ride to get to Protection Island from the Cape George Marina, but no boats are allowed within 200 yards of the island’s shore, and kayakers are barred from landing on shore.

Protection Island is the home of 70 percent of the Puget Sound’s nesting seabirds, and it’s one of the two places in the Puget Sound that supports nesting areas for rare tufted puffins and rhinoceros auklets.

To protect nature, the small piece of land was designated a Wildlife Refuge in 1982. Then, in 2010, the Department of Natural Resources designated 24,000 acres which surround the island as an Aquatic Reserve.

Despite the lack of humans, there is still a lot of work that goes into preserving the refuge. Much of that work is done by volunteers who are part of the Protection Island Aquatic Reserve Citizen Stewardship Committee, a group of citizen scientists who do everything from counting birds and marine mammals, to observing intertidal biota, to driving boats and writing down data.

The committee is a joint effort between the Port Townsend Marine Science Center citizen science program and the Department of Natural Resources Aquatic Reserves program.

“What we’re trying to do is get some sort of long-term data set that shows how bird populations are doing, and not just the birds that nest on the island, but the birds that spend time in the aquatic reserve around the island,” said Naturalist Bob Boekelheide, a member of the Protection Island Citizen Stewardship Committee.

Boekelheide is one of the volunteers who take monthly trips out to the waters which surround the island to monitor wildlife.

Marine Science Center Citizen Science coordinator Betsy Carlson said the group had counted more than 23,000 birds and 500 marine mammals in the aquatic reserve after 23 surveys since November 2016.

When the team is on the water, it takes several volunteers to complete the survey. At least two people have binoculars to search the sea and the island for birds and mammals. Another person notes the species and how many there are. They also count the number of seals on shore, since Protection Island is a place where harbor seals and elephant seals haul out and raise their pups. Compiling the data helps them understand the migratory habits of birds and those of marine mammals.

“We have birds there that nest in the arctic, we have birds that nest in the Taiga Forest in Canada and Alaska, and they’re coming to our little neck of the woods to spend the winter,” Boekelheide said. “It’s another way of keeping our thumb on the pulse of life.”

Carlson said the data collected will go to the DNR Aquatic Reserve Program’s statewide database and will be added to the Aquatic Reserve data viewer. In the future, researchers and students could use it to study patterns of bird migration and marine mammals.

“I asked Bob at one time historically how often have these surveys been carried out over this period of time, and we wondered if they had ever been carried out,” said Ross Anderson, who drives the boat that takes scientists on the water.

For Anderson and Boekelheide, joining the citizen stewardship committee to study birds on Protection Island comes from a scientific desire to just know more.

“The only studies that have regularly been done have been by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife,” said Boekelheide, highlighting the WDFW mainly does aerial surveys of waterfowl. “We’re trying to see birds as a community and how that entire community of birds is doing right now to give us a baseline for measuring in the future.”

More than birds

Studying the Protection Island Aquatic Reserve is more than just studying birds, however.

This July, citizen scientists and volunteers from the Cape George community hit the beach to monitor animal and plant species in the intertidal zones.

“It was the first time that anyone around here, since I’ve lived here, has done an actual survey of the intertidal to see what’s there,” said Wendy Feltham, who participated in the survey. “It was really fascinating.”

When there was a minus tide at the Cape George beach, teams worked in different sections of the beach to survey the beach line and to compile data of species in the intertidal areas — everything from crabs to eelgrass and seaweed.

“We found some species that I’ve never seen here, like the giant California sea cucumber,” Feltham said. “There were a number of those, and I’d never ever found one on the Port Townsend beach. “Cape George beach is known as a really excellent place for intertidal exploration.”

The Port Townsend Marine Science Center has plans to continue the intertidal monitoring and expand to monitoring the intertidal areas on Kinzie Beach at Fort Worden in the future.

“What you don’t know about you can’t preserve,” said Johanna King, who has been leading bird watching tours since the 1990s. “Our goal is to get people committed and excited about conservation, about learning more and about understanding the environment that we all share.”