An Ecosystem
of Conflicting Needs
Thousands of years ago, the place we call Puget Sound was covered with
huge ice fields called glaciers. Saltwater was far away and the Sound did
not exist. As the climate warmed, glaciers began to melt and release water
into the Pacific Ocean. Slowly sea levels rose and saltwater from the ocean
found its way into a deep valley carved by glaciers between the Cascade and
Olympic mountain ranges. What was once a freshwater lowland became a
saltwater environment. Many kinds of plants, animals, and people came to
live there. Today we call it Puget Sound.
Puget Sound is more than just the water that fowed into that glacier-carved
valley thousands of years ago. It includes the land called the Puget Sound
watershed and all its freshwater and saltwater. Millions of plants, animals,
and people make their homes here. And everything and everybody who lives
around the Sound is connected by what happens in this vast ecosytem.
Puget Sound
Where Is the Puget Sound
Watershed?
A watershed is all the land where rain collects
and runs to an area called an outlet. Water-
sheds are everywhere and can be very small
or very big. The Puget Sound watershed is all
around us and it is huge. It has 16,000 square
miles of land including meadows, wetlands,
rivers, lakes, bogs, and streams.
The land in our watershed also includes many
hills and mountains. As you look around out-
side, you can see that those mountains slope
toward Puget Sound the way the inside of a
bathtub slopes toward the drain. Water drains
from the mountains and travels many miles
through forests, farms, towns, and cities before
it finally reaches the saltwater of Puget Sound.
Where do you think the water in your play-
ground goes? How about the water in your
driveway or in the street in front of your house
or apartment? These places are watersheds
also.
The Puget Sound Ecosystem
Puget Sound is an ecosytem where saltwater from the ocean mixes
with freshwater from hundreds of rivers and streams that empty
into the Sound. It is so big that the water at its deepest part would
almost cover one Space Needle stacked on top of another Space
Needle. It has 1331 miles of saltwater shoreline and 16,000 miles
of lake, river, and stream shores. Twice each day tides move billions
of gallons of water in and out of Puget Sound.
Everything in Puget Sound’s ecosystem is connected. The land,
water, air, light, and all the living things, including us, are part of this
ecosystem. There are many different kinds of habitats in and around
Puget Sound: rocky shores, sandy-gravel beaches, shallow bays, and
deep-water areas as well as mountains, wetlands, streams, rivers,
and lakes. Plants and animals live in every part of the ecosystem.
So do humans (more than three million of us!) Over one million
live in King County with 600,000 living in Seattle.
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Problems in Puget Sound
Many of the problems in Puget Sound come from lots of little
things that all of us do every day. Little things add up to big
problems. For instance, just four quarts of motor oil can make an
eight-acre oil slick on the water. Big oil spills do not happen often,
but thousands of small oil spills occur every day in Puget Sound
when motor oil is dumped down street drains, cars leak oil on the
street, or boats lose oil and gas in the water.
Every year the average Puget Sound resident uses almost two
pounds of poisons called pesticides to kill insects and other pests.
Some of these poisons find their way into the Sound where they
damage or kill plants and animals. Toxic chemicals we use in our
houses and gardens also are dangerous for fish and other aquatic
animals. Fertilizers increase plant growth in Puget Sound, which
may use up oxygen animals need to stay alive. Even when we
wash our hands, our clothes, or our dishes, we add our wastes to
the water that fows into the Sound.
Puget Sound and People
The Puget Sound watershed brings clean water
to all the plants, animals, and people who live
here. Water has been rolling off our mountains
and traveling in creeks, streams, rivers, and
even underground into Puget Sound for thou-
sands of years. For most of that time only a
few people lived around the Sound. But today
many, many people live here. In fact, there are
more people living here today than lived here
in all the previous 10,000 years.
As humans moved into the Puget Sound
watershed, we changed the way the watershed
works. Water that used to fow through forests,
meadows, and wetlands now travels through
pipes, over roads, and through cities. As water
travels through the watershed, it picks up a lot
of things along its way to Puget Sound. Oil, gas,
and chemicals from millions of cars, fertilizer
from lawns and gardens, manure from farms,
sewage from millions of toilets, and much
more is washed into the Sound. Puget Sound
has many problems caused by this pollution
that humans create. And by 2020 another
million people may move into this area.
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Some runoff with sediment occurs naturally.
But humans
cause much of it, especially
when we cut down trees and other plants.
Once great forests of huge trees stretched
from the mountains right down to the shores
of Puget Sound. But we have cut down much
of the forests in the Puget Sound watershed.
In addition, wetlands that used to absorb
water and slowly release it have been filled
in, covered, and built on. Much of the land
around Puget Sound is now covered with
hard surfaces like blacktop, and houses and
buildings. Water cannot soak through these
surfaces and reach the soil. When it rains,
water races off the hard surfaces, picks up
sediment, and then gushes toward
Puget Sound.
Many toxic chemicals like fertilizers, motor
oil, and other pollutants are carried into the
Sound in this way. The sediment and the
pollutants settle to the bottom of the Sound
where fish and other animals live and eat.
Puget Sound fatfish spend most of their lives
lying on the sediment. Some, like the English
sole, have large amounts of pollutants in their
bodies and have developed tumors. Sediment
also clogs fish gills and smothers fish eggs
as well as other bottom dwellers like clams,
oysters, and crabs.
Plants and Animals Around
the Sound
What happens to plants and animals in Puget Sound as they
share the land and water with millions of humans? Let’s look
at some important examples.
Trees and Other Plants
When you over water your yard, what happens? If there is
so much water that not all of it can soak into the soil, some
runs off and carries soil with it. That soil is called sediment.
Forests do a good job of keeping sediment from running into
the water. Tree roots hold the soil in place, and leaves and
branches slow down the rain so it hits the ground more gently.
Leaves on the ground are like sponges that soak up the water
and slow its fow. When trees do all this work, they keep the
soil where it belongs.
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Eelgrass Nurseries
Eelgrass is a saltwater plant that has long, green, skinny
leaves but is not a seaweed. Like a land plant, it has
roots that help hold down the muddy bottom of the
Sound. Big beds of eelgrass are nurseries for many
young saltwater animals like salmon, clams, crabs,
and oysters. They are good places to hide and find
food while animals are growing large enough to move
out and live in the ocean. Some animals depend on
eelgrass beds for food and shelter throughout their
lives. Many eelgrass beds in Puget Sound have been
destroyed by pollution as well as by land developments
such as boat marinas.
Clams Can’t Choose
What weighs 25 pounds and lives for a hundred years?
A geoduck, the biggest clam in Puget Sound. Like all
clams and oysters, geoducks strain their food from the
water. They filter and eat tiny plants and animals called
plankton from seawater they pump through their
bodies. One geoduck can filter many gallons of
seawater every day.
Filter feeders like clams and oysters cannot choose
what they filter out of the water. If there are things like
pollutants or dangerous bacteria, they eat that as well
as the good things they need. For thousands of years,
shellfish such as clams and oysters thrived in the cold,
clean waters of Puget Sound. Today, they often have to
live in water that contains bacteria and pollutants. Some
of the bacteria they eat comes from sewage, storm
runoff, boats, and farms. These shellfish are dangerous
for people to eat. About one-fourth of the shellfish-
growing areas in Puget Sound have harvest restrictions
or are closed because of bacterial contamination.
Endangered Salmon
Salmon, like people, depend on the watershed and live in
many different parts of it. They hatch in rivers, travel down-
stream to live in Puget Sound and the ocean, and return to
rivers to lay eggs and then die. Things changed for salmon
as forests were cut, land was covered with buildings and
pavement, and rivers and streams were dammed. As we
changed the land around Puget Sound, we took away much
of the salmon’s habitat. Today salmon have only about half
of the habitat they need to survive.
Salmon were the most important fish in Puget Sound for
Native Americans. When white settlers came here they
also depended on salmon. For many years there were
plenty of salmon for everyone to catch, eat, and sell.
People caught salmon in rivers, streams, lakes, and in the
Sound. They caught them in nets and with fishing poles.
For years, people caught too many salmon, which is called
overharvesting. Today, because we overharvested and have
damaged the places they need to live, salmon are in danger
of extinction. In fact, in 1999 the largest kind of salmon
in Puget Sound was officially placed on the Endangered
Species List.
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There are also three families or pods of orca
whales that live in Puget Sound. They spend the
winter in the ocean and return to Puget Sound
in the spring. Their favorite food is the Chinook
salmon, which now is in danger of becoming
extinct. Orcas follow the salmon from the ocean
into Puget Sound. Now that salmon are much
harder to find in the Sound, what will the orcas
do for food? Some people think they may search
for food elsewhere and stop living in Puget
Sound. What would you do if you were running
out of your favorite food?
Disappearing Herring
In addition to salmon, the Sound has about 200 other kinds of
fish. These include many kinds of cod, seaperch, greenlings,
sculpins, and fatfish as well as 26 different species of rockfish.
Some of the fish live in sandy bays or eelgrass beds while others
live near rocks or in very deep water.
One of the most important species in Puget Sound is Pacific
herring. They are food for many Puget Sound animals including
fish, birds, and seals. The number of herring in the Sound has
decreased steadily since 1975. We do not know exactly why
this is happening. We do know, however, that Pacific herring are
very sensitive to oil and other chemicals that foat on the water’s
surface. Female herring lay their eggs near the surface on eel-
grass or seaweed in shallow water. In which ways do you think
contaminated water that runs off the land into the Sound might
affect the herring population?
Whales and Seals in Puget Sound
Puget Sound is home to 26 kinds of marine mammals such as
seals and whales. The marine mammal you are most likely to
see is the harbor seal. About 16,000 live in the Puget Sound
region. They are sometimes called top predators because they
are rarely eaten by anything else in Puget Sound. Being a top
predator is dangerous if the food you eat contains pollutants. For
many years harbor seals in the Sound carried high levels of toxic
chemicals in their bodies which affected the birth and growth of
seal pups. Sometimes, fishermen shot seals that damaged
fishing gear.
Today, harbor seals are protected by federal law from being
harmed. They also have much lower levels of chemical
contamination in their bodies because some areas where
they live have been cleaned up.
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Oil, Water, and Marine Life Are a
Bad Mix
What is the biggest boat you have ever seen in
Puget Sound? The very biggest ones are longer
than a football field. These huge tankers and barg-
es often carry oil as they travel through the Sound.
Twenty-eight ocean-going commercial ships come
near the entrance to Puget Sound every day and
each of these ships may carry up to two million
gallons of oil.
Did you know that all the water that 30 people
will drink throughout their whole lives can be con-
taminated by just one quart of oil? Since 1990, oil
spills have decreased around Puget Sound, but
they continue to happen all the time and are a
serious problem. Even very small oil and gas spills
add up and are just as dangerous as a big spill.
Does your family buy gallon jugs of milk? Think
about what your backyard would look like if you
spilled 10,000 of those jugs in it. Major oil spills
of more than 10,000 gallons happen every year
in Puget Sound. Serious oil spills of 25 gallons
to 10,000 gallons also occur several times
each year.
Most of the oil spills happen on land or when ships are being
fueled. People handling the oil make mistakes or do not follow
proper rules for handling oil, and sometimes equipment used
with the oil breaks down. When these things cause oil spills,
marine life in Puget Sound is endangered.
Oil spills hurt marine life in different ways depending on the
type of oil, how much is spilled and cleaned up, and the
weather and water conditions during the spill. Heavy spills are
immediately dangerous for marine life, while many small spills
lead to long-term problems. Oil suffocates fish by clogging
their gills. Birds get sick and die as they swallow oil they clean
from their feathers. Oil irritates and damages eyes and skin on
many animals. It may also destroy food supplies that animals
depend on.
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You Can Help Take Care of Puget
Sound
Taking care of Puget Sound means changing the way we
do some things in order to keep our watershed and the
Sound a healthy place to live. Here are some things that
you and your family can do.
Recycle trash
Call 1-800-RECYCLE if you do not know what to do with
your paper, metal, and plastic trash. Every year we make
enough garbage to stack six feet deep in four lanes of the
freeway between Seattle and Spokane.
Conserve water
Help your family check for leaks in faucets, toilets, hoses,
and pipes.
Recycle used motor oil
Remind your family to call 1-800-RECYCLE to find out
where to take used motor oil. Never pour oil down the
street drain, because it will fow directly into streams,
lakes, and Puget Sound.
Plant trees and shrubs
Trees and shrubs help water filter into the ground and
prevent erosion. That keeps sediment from getting into
rivers, streams, and Puget Sound.
Use fertilizers and pesticides carefully
Ask the adults in your family to avoid putting toxic
chemicals and fertilizer on the lawn or garden. Rainwater
washes those chemicals into the Sound where they may
remain for hundreds of years.
Scoop your dog’s poop
Pet waste should be disposed of in garbage cans. Do not
leave it where it will wash into streams or Puget Sound
.
Use phosphorous-free detergents
Read the labels on detergent packages and
buy only those with low or no phosphorous.
Phosphorous can cause plants in streams and
lakes to grow so rapidly they use up all the
oxygen needed for other aquatic life.
It is not always easy for us to change the way
we live our lives in our own homes. In the real
world, we also do not all have the same points
of view about how each of us should live and
share our Puget Sound ecosystem. People do
not even agree on what the problems are and
whom they affect.
Most of the problems around the Sound are
caused by things we humans do as we live our
lives. Since we are all part of the problems in
Puget Sound, we all have to be part of the
solution, too.
Think over the Puget Sound problems you
have just read about and how you would solve
them. Remember that the people who live,
work, and play in the Puget Sound watershed
have different points of view about the prob-
lems and their solutions. Discuss with others
who have a different point of view and find out
what each of you may have to do or give up to
solve the problems.
