While walking a stretch of Christensen Creek she has surveyed each winter for the past ten years, Bianca Perla, director of Vashon Nature Center, felt a slight change in the atmosphere she often notices before encountering something unexpected in nature.

It was late last year, just before the winter solstice, and as Perla walked along the creek, she had found her calm center amid the holiday bustle as she looked for fish.

“I saw a fin above the water and at first, I thought, ‘Wow, a coho made it up this far,’ because the water wasn’t too deep,” Perla said. “But when I got closer, I could see there were two fish kind of bumping against each other. Then one of them darted off into a clear pool to the side, and I could see spots all over it.”

She recognized the spotted pattern as a cutthroat trout, but the size was surprising. She regularly sees 2-4 inch-long resident cutthroat in this creek, but one in this pair was 12 inches long, and the other nearly 18 inches.

“I was so excited when I realized these were spawning sea-run cutthroat trout, and it was a wonderful gift at that time of year — the solstice is like the new year to me, when the light starts coming back and portends new growth,” Perla said. “I knew there were cutthroat trout in Christensen because I’d seen smaller ones, but I didn’t know if sea-run cutthroat were still using it until I saw these two — nobody has witnessed sea-run cutthroat spawning there for a very long time. It was poignant to see them bringing a new generation of life into the creek.”

Unlike fellow salmonids coho and chum, cutthroat trout live in island streams year-round. The cutthroat has two forms: landlocked and anadromous (or ocean migrating) — and though their lifestyles differ dramatically, they are the same species. (Similarly, steelhead are the sea-run version of rainbow trout.)

Both landlocked and ocean-migrating trout species are iteroparous, meaning they can spawn more than once, unlike Pacific salmon species like chum and coho, which die after spawning once.

After hatching, resident cutthroat trout stay in the stream permanently, while sea-run cutthroat trout head to saltwater where they live before returning to their natal stream to spawn.

The sea-run cutthroat life cycle involves the fish spawning in creeks — generally from February to May — then regaining their strength in estuaries before returning to Puget Sound where they live before spawning again. Though sea-run cutthroat regularly spawned 4−5 times over 7−8 years a decade ago, recent studies show these fish are now only spawning once, largely due to the loss of the estuarine habitat they need to rejuvenate before returning to the Sound.

“A lot of attention has been paid to our bigger salmon species, because they are so much a part of our economy and culture here, but the sea-run cutthroats are like a younger sibling that never gets the limelight,” Perla adds. “They’re incredibly important components of our stream systems, and they serve a lot of similar functions to other salmon, like bringing ocean-derived nutrients back to our forests.”

“I consider them to be the island salmonid,” says Rayna Holtz, longtime salmon watcher and island naturalist who has surveyed island streams for years.“Cutthroat are the most widespread salmonid on the island and they live in our creeks year-round.”

It may come as a surprise to many islanders that cutthroat trout have been documented in 20 of the more than 75 creeks surveyed on Vashon. These creeks include McCormick, Baldwin, Shinglemill, Ober, Robinwood, Christensen, Bates, Paradise Cove, Tahlequah, Shawnee, Fisher, Judd, Tsugwalla, Raab’s, Ellis, Gorsuch, Dilworth, Mileta, Ellisport, and Beall.

For more information on streams that have been surveyed, explore an interactive map from Wild Fish Conservancy or see a table here summarizing salmonid records from a variety of reports.

“We call sea-run cutthroat the apex predator of the super shallow nearshore,” said James Losee, regional fish program manager for Region 6 of the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). “They occupy the margins of the marine environment, hanging out along shallow beaches with the clams and barnacles — areas where otters, seals, and sea lions aren’t. They fill an important niche in the ecosystem as predators helping to help control disease and balance the food web.”

Another notable fact is that cutthroat distribution along the West Coast perfectly overlays with temperate rainforests — you won’t find them anywhere else.

“They’re really important to our coastal rainforest ecosystem,” Losee said. “They have an interconnected role with chum salmon — they feed heavily on chum flesh, and eggs, and fry. And a lot of terrestrial and avian predators feed on cutthroat.”

Humans also find them tasty — cutthroat are a favorite fish among anglers.

“WDFW manages five species of Pacific salmon, steelhead, and all the other fish and commercial fisheries, and that doesn’t leave many resources to think about cutthroat trout,” he added. “We really know very little about them and that’s kind of sad, but also an exciting place to be as a scientist.”

Losee helped form the Coastal Cutthroat Coalition (coastalcutthroatcoalition.com) to bring scientists, tribes, anglers, and the community together around the science and management of sea-run cutthroat trout. He relies on volunteer community scientists for intel on cutthroat, just as Vashon Salmon Watchers have been essential to gathering island chum and coho knowledge.

Volunteers collected all the data in a groundbreaking paper about sea-run cutthroat redds (nests) that Losee co-authored in 2016.

Here on Vashon, islanders can add to the island’s cutthroat knowledge by becoming salmon watchers, or simply quietly watching a local stream, especially in the peak spawning period in February and March.

Losee noted that sea-run cutthroat are sneaky when spawning, so people looking for them must be equally stealthy.

These fish like streams with overhanging vegetation and shade, where the flow of the water is slow — about half a person’s normal walking speed. Their preferred water depth is typically less than three feet, and they generally make redds in areas with slightly bigger than pea-sized streambed gravel.

Salmon-watch Coordinator Kelly Keenan was surprised to find a pair of sea-run cutthroat spawning under the Shinglemill Creek Cedarhurst culvert several years ago.

She has always hated to see the salmon-watching season end, just as the sea-run cutthroat season is beginning. Keenan hopes islanders will be inspired to explore their nearest creek to increase the possibility of more local sea-run sightings.

If islanders find spawning trout, they are urged to take a photo and fill out a Vashon Nature Center contact form with the location, date, and time.

“Seeing trout spawning in Christensen gives me deep admiration for the tenacity of these fish — and it gives me hope,” Perla said. “Environmental news can be depressing, but what isn’t said is that [the] earth is a powerful system, and there are all these interconnections working towards health. Sometimes if we change a few things to create better conditions, nature will take it the rest of the way.”

Kathryn True is an island writer and a member of the Vashon Nature Center (VNC) science advisory council. This article first appeared on the Vashon Nature Center blog, at vashonnaturecenter.org, and includes a video of the two sea-run cutthroat trout seen by Bianca Perla in Christensen Creek.

Also visit the website to sign up for Vashon Nature Center’s newsletter, at tinyurl.com/y84ae3wy, for announcements about volunteer opportunities, including salmon watching.