OCTOBER 16, 2014 -- Last summer NOAA's Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program (DARRP) traveled to the remote Adak Island in Alaska to help salmon return to their historical home by removing barriers from Helmet Creek. We headed back out this September to see how things were going. As you can see from our photos, the salmon seem to be big fans of our 2013 restoration work. Our mission this September was to monitor the success of these habitat restoration efforts and make sure no new problems have occurred since then. A survey of the creek quickly showed that salmon are now pushing as far upstream as naturally possibly, allowing them to enter formerly impassable areas with ease. Now the only thing preventing salmon from continuing further upstream is a natural waterfall. During this visit, Helmet Creek was teaming with Pink and Chum salmon. One walk of the roughly two kilometer (one and a quarter mile) portion of stream resulted in our counting more than 600 adult salmon, over half of which were beyond the areas where we had removed fish passage barriers. Before we stepped in to restore Helmet Creek, salmon were hitting a number of man-made obstacles preventing them from getting to the natural areas where they reproduce, known as their spawning grounds. In 2013 we removed these fish barriers, pulling out a number of 55-gallon drums and grates, all of which were impeding the salmon’s ability to swim upstream and covering their spawning grounds. While seeing all these active fish is exciting, we are also looking forward to the ways these fish will continue helping the environment after they die. As salmon are now able to travel further upstream, they will take valuable nutrients with them too. After spawning, these pink and chum salmon will die and their decaying carcasses will return extremely valuable nutrients to the stream habitat and surrounding area. These nutrients will provide benefits to resident trout, vegetation, and birds nearby.

Salmon swim through a culvert, which we cleared of grates and debris in 2013, while making their way to spawning grounds in Helmet Creek on Adak Island. (NOAA)

Restoration of Helmet Creek resulted from our work to restore the environment after a 2010 oil spill on the remote Adak Island, part of Alaska's Aleutian Island chain. Through DARRP, we worked with our partners to determine how the environment was injured and how best to restore habitat. You can read more about our efforts in—and the unusual challenges of—assessing these environmental impacts to salmon and Helmet Creek.