Carbon Dioxide in Chimacum Creek

 

We live in Chimacum, Washington. There is a creek in our town that chum salmon used to go through,but now they don't.Our job is to find out if the creek is ideal for the chum salmon to live in. We are studying Carbon Dioxide(CO2) in Chimacm Creek and are here to share with you some facts about CO2 and Chimacum Creek. So without any further ado, here we go.

One hundred years ago farmers came to Chimacum. At that time the creek was still flowing on it's natural path. But when farmers arrived and claimed their land they ran into a problem, the creek. So they decided that they would straighten out the creek, which was fine for the farmers but not for the fish. When Chimacum Creeks twists and turns were taken out it became a fast flowing creek. Unfortunately the creeks fish were not used to fast moving water, and could not adapt to the fast water very well. Another problem was that the fish's eggs were being swept away in the fast current, and if they did make it to the fry stage they didn't have any where to rest in the large, quick flowing, water.

As a result of all the problems caused by the straightened creek, the salmon stopped laying their eggs in the creek and thus the Chum salmon were gone from the creek. But the straighened creek wasn't the only problem with the creek. Then, years later, the farmers noticed that the salmon had left and never come back, which was not a good thing obviously. So action had to be taken very soon, whch it was. But their effort to save the creek caused more harm than good. The farmers decided to dump wood chips into the creek in an effort to replace the, long since gone, twists and turns of the creek. But the wood chips may have had some chemicals on them.

But one thing we do know is that the salmon are gone and we were trying to figure out if Chimacum Creek is safe for fish. Unfortunately our data from our tests were not very solid(we didn't have consistent data). So to find out if Chimacum Creek is safe for chum salmon, read on!

 

 

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