14. Barkley Sound/Pacific Coastal Washington

Site Overview

This transboundary PCA is in the open ocean on the west side of southern Vancouver Island and Washington’s outer coast. The rocky shoreline, interspersed with tidal flats, receives high-energy waves constantly. The continental shelf here is about 40 kilometers (25 miles) wide, except at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca where a submarine canyon extends to the southwest. Barkley Sound is just north of the opening of the Strait on Vancouver Island’s west coast. This wide embayment encompasses numerous islets and is connected to a long and narrow inlet that extends far inland. The nutrient-rich plume from the Fraser River goes through this priority area, and the eddy that originates at the mouth of the Strait carries the nutrients offshore across the shelf.

Glass sponges and black and gorgonian corals are found along the continental slope off the Washington coast. To the west of this priority area, 250 kilometers (155 miles) offshore, are the Endeavor hydrothermal vents, where a suite of endemic species thrive that are not found elsewhere in the world.

The Barkley Sound/Pacific Coastal Washington area is home to an assortment of fishes. Important fishes include salmon, herring, hake (Merluccius productus) and other species, such as eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus), mackerel and sardine (Sardinops sagax), are important components of the ecosystem (DFO 2003). Flatfishes such as Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) and Dover sole, as well as yellowtail, copper, quillback (Sebastes maliger) and various other rockfishes which enjoy high-relief habitat are found here. Commercial fisheries also target salmon, Pacific Ocean perch (Sebastes alutus) and rougheye rockfish (S. aleutianus). In addition to the 400,000 sockeye that come from the various streams feeding into Barkley Sound (DFO 1999c), other salmon from the Georgia Strait traverse this PCA as well.

Occasionally, feeding leatherback sea turtles and, more rarely, loggerhead turtles are sighted in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and around Grays Harbor, Washington. The productive waters sustain a variety of birds and mammals. Large concentrations of seabirds forage in the area, with their numbers peaking in the spring and fall. Common murre, rhinoceros auklet and tufted puffin are some of the seabirds that nest here. Gray and humpback whales regularly travel through on their way north to feeding grounds in Alaska. The Strait of Juan de Fuca is a key habitat for killer whales. Steller’s and california sea lions and Pacific harbor seals haul out on beaches. The Olympic Peninsula coastline between Neah Bay and Destruction Island is a key habitat for a growing population of sea otter, reintroduced in 1970 following their local extirpation by fur hunters.