Ever since the first time I saw Protection Island across the water from Sequim in the late 1990s, I’ve wondered about it. My aunt, an Audubon member, told me the largest colony of Rhinoceros Auklets in the state was on the closed-to-the-public island and described their nesting habits. I’ve been fascinated ever since.
Scott Pearson, a senior research scientist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), said that the 379-acre federal and state wildlife sanctuary – the 10th largest Rhinoceros Auklet colony in the world – in 2008 had an estimated 36,145 occupied burrows, and that “we hope to repeat this survey in the next couple of years.”
About the island, Pearson said, “It is arguably the most important seabird nesting site in the entire Salish Sea and one of the few places with breeding tufted puffins and rhinoceros auklets.
“Plus it has a full assemblage of breeders from black oystercatchers (a shorebird) and glaucous-winged gulls (and hybrids) to pigeon guillemots, rhinoceros auklets, tufted puffins and cormorants.
“This is one of the last places where, due to lack of human activity and disturbance, these species continue to exist.”
Last fall, Pearson led a WDFW team to a vantage point above Kanam point to see the extent of a wildfire in August 2021 that burned almost 26 acres of shoreline, slope and meadow habitat before being extinguished by a multi-agency team. Their efforts were backed by a helpful wind blowing away from the interior of the island.
I was ecstatic to be included in the tour. Most of the pictures in this photo essay are from that day.
Pearson has been going to the island since 2004, as well as studying other bird populations in the sound and the coast, so he has much knowledge and wisdom to share and also has taken many gorgeous photos.
While standing confidently on a ledge of a steep slope riddled with Rhinoceros Auklet burrows over 100 feet above the shoreline, he discussed with us the effects of the fire. It was non-nesting season, as the scientists and workers who come to the island try to disturb the birds as little as possible.
Rhinoceros auklets, the oldest member of the puffin family despite their name, are more resilient to disturbance than the tufted puffins, Pearson told us. He said that scientists are constantly considering, “What are our impacts and how do we minimize them?”
An improbable-looking little bird is the face of Protection Island for many people, but according to the 2015 Washington State Status Report for the Tufted Puffin, “Historically, ornithologists considered Tufted Puffins among the most common seabirds on the Washington coast and estimated the breeding population in the tens of thousands…. More recent studies, however, point to widespread colony abandonment and a rapid order of magnitude population decline throughout Washington.”
According to Pearson, there has been just one confirmed nesting pair raising their young for the last two years on Protection. The puffins raise only one puffling at a time. The only other place in the Salish Sea/Puget sound that they nest is Smith Island, where Pearson says there are “about 27 active puffin burrows.”
The Fish and Wildlife team was also there to see the progress of a 3-acre hand-cast seeding of native plants in a burnt meadow. They hoped that the native plants would have a chance to establish themselves before the island’s common invasive plants took over.
On another occasion, I had the honor of meeting with the island’s only resident, Marty Bluewater in Cape George, who has become something of a celebrity since he is the only person to hold onto the house he built on a plot of land purchased during a push in the 1970s to turn the island into a vacation home paradise.
Like the few other buildings on the island, Bluewater’s house becomes the property of the U.S. government after he passes.
Bluewater said, “It’s all been really a dream.”
“I never expected it to be such a public part of my life, but it allowed me to meet a lot of really neat people.”
He supported the transition of the island to its federally protected status beacause, “this fragile of a place couldn’t really sustain itself with a bunch of people running around,” but he would like to see more done about the eagles and something permanent on the island to fight wildfires.
After seeing Protection Island up close, like the fortunate state and federal employees that oversee it, the scientists who document it, the last human inhabitant and his guests, I fell in love. I want to share with you some of what I saw that day and have learned since, in case you, too, are fascinated by this mysterious place which belongs to the birds.
Emily Matthiessen is a reporter with the Sequim Gazette.
Photo by Emily Matthiessen / Marty Bluewater has spent more than 50 years coming and going from Protection Island since he bought a plot of land in 1971 and built a getaway that has now become his retirement home. He says that “it’s one of the most unique places in the world,” and, aware that he is fortunate to live the dream he expressed long ago to his parents of “living on a deserted island,” he does his best to share it with the world, through interviews with journalists, photographs and stories that may some day be a book, a possible foundation and donating visits to his home for fundraisers, which has raised close to $100,000. His friends, he says, want him to stay alive as long as possible, so they can continue to enjoy what they call “a magical place.”
Photo by Emily Matthiessen / The fire of Aug. 2021 began on Kanem Point where hundreds of seals raise their babies, part of the state-managed Zella M. Schultz Seabird Sanctuary on the west side of Protection Island. It consumed 25-26 acres before being subdued by an interagency state and federal team. A line of white driftwood against dark shows what washed up since the fire. The fire occurred during Pigeon Guillemot nesting season; on the island they generally utilize the driftwood for hatching and raising their young. “Given the timing of the fire and the fact that nearly all of the driftwood on Kanem Spit was consumed,” said Pearson, “I think it is reasonable to assume that all guillemot chicks within the fire perimeter and that were nesting in the driftwood were killed by the fire. I assume that the adult guillemots fled the island during the fire, but I don’t know.”
Senior Research Scientist Scott Pearson, right, leads a team from Washington State Fish and Wildlife on a tour along the road through Protection Island to a viewpoint of where the Aug. 3, 2021, fire burned through 26 acres, primarily on state protected land known as the Zella M. Schultz Seabird Sanctuary. From left, Katie Laushman, WDFW wildlife area manager, Samantha Montgomery, division manager, and Josh Cook, prairie restoration specialist, take in the view. Laushman and Cook are part of an effort to reseed burned areas with native plants.
In the distance, to the left, a building used by the the US Fish and Wildlife can be seen behind mowed lines that “create fire breaks in preparation for prescribed burns which are one of our tools for restoration of native plants on the island,” wrote Sue Thomas, wildlife biologist, Washington Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Complex. “The primary goal of the vegetation restoration efforts is to remove non-native plants and establish native plants. Since Protection Island was designated a national wildlife refuge in 1982, refuge managers have been working to restore habitat and support wildlife that rely on the island – including endangered species such as the golden paintbrush and Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly.” The FWS website states the project began in 2015 with the goal to restore up to 200 acres. Katie Laushman, wildlife area manager with Washington Department State Fish and Wildlife, which is also working to restore native plants on the island, said, “It’s been great to have such strong interagency collaboration; an island managed by two different entities could result in challenges, but instead this team works really well to get goals completed together that help improve the environment out there.”
A glaucous-winged gull pauses outside one of 46 nesting boxes placed on Protection Island to help Pigeon Guillemots. “In a lot Puget Sound they nest in cliffs,” said Sarah Converse, unit leader, USGS Washington Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and associate professor at the University of Washington, “but on Protection Island they nest in driftwood and nesting boxes.” Converse and graduate student Liam Pendleton are working with a group that is analyzing contamination levels from dead chicks or eggs, of which they lay several. “Pigeon Guillemots are widely distributed, but Protection Island has a large colony and is unique for studying because they have no ground predators,” said Converse. She said that Lee Robinson compiled over a decade of data on the Guillemots, beginning in 1996, and placed 25 nesting boxes on the island
Photo courtesy of Scott Pearson / A Pigeon Guillemot catches a snake prickleback in the waters around Protection Island. According to Sue Thomas, Wildlife Biologist, Washington Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Complex, “Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge supports one of the highest densities during breeding season of pigeon guillemots in the Salish Sea – one of the top five breeding colonies in Washington state. Approximately 150 pairs nest on the island within the driftwood along the shoreline or in burrows up in the bluffs.”
Pelagic cormorants and glaucous-winged and hybridized gulls are present in large numbers around the Protection Island marina. These species are strongly affected by the resurgence of the bald eagle. As the eagle numbers go up, the gull numbers go down, said Jim Hayward, research professor emeritus at Andrews University, who has been involved with monitoring the gull colony since 1987, when eagles were uncommon, before the Eagle Protection Act was put into effect. Bluewater said that there “used to be a big colony of cormorants at the top of the road” that were scared away from nesting on the island by the eagles. He said that as many as to 50 come to the island, but only one pair nests each year in a 12-foot diameter nest.
“Protection Island is a glacial till island that was formed by the deposition of glacially eroded sediment over thousands of years,” say the Protection Island Aquatic Reserve Plan. Many fossils from the ice age have been found here. Coming up to the island by boat, the difference in erosion on the western to northern side of the roughly triangular island and the southern facing side is stark. A eagle perches on a rock some 100 feet above the shore where gulls and harbor seals congregate. Jim Hayward, who has been studying eagles and seagulls on the island for decades and also has an interest in geology, said that the island is shrinking by several feet a year.
Hundreds of harbor seals use Protection Island, primarily the spits, to raise their young. According to Lorenz Sollmann, deputy project leader, Washington Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Complex, it is “one of the only places in Washington state where northern elephant seals raise their pups.
Standing above a steep hillside over 100 feet high, riddled with rhinoceros auklet and tufted puffin burrows. Washington State Fish and Wildlife Senior Research Scientist Scott Pearson details studies on the nesting habitats of rhinoceros auklets and tufted puffins to a group of Washington state fish and wildlife employees at Protection Island last fall.
A small segment of one of the grassy cliffs of Protection Island shows more than 40 entrances to rhinoceros auklet nesting burrows. Deep within they will raise their babies in a room off a maze of tunnels. An ecosystem exists within the tunnels as well. Pearson said that no one has done a formal study on the beetles and spiders and other denizens of the auklet’s seasonal homes.
Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma has a population of 22 tufted puffins, with 7 mated pairs, and successful hatches. Unlike in the wild, where they are very sensitive to human activity, they are adjusted to living their lives under human supervision. The zoo provided burrows for them, but Noelle Tremonti, staff biologist and zookeeper at the Rocky Shores area said that they have been digging some of their own also. “All the animals are encouraged to have natural behaviors,” she said. If the tufted puffins breed successfully in confinement, would a solution to their declining population be to release them into the wild? No, say experts in Puffin decline, because it doesn’t address the core environmental issues affecting the decline. “While reintroduction is mentioned in the state’s puffin recovery plan, it is not the primary focus and most of the work is on improving puffin habitat in the wild,” wrote the zoo’s general curator, Malia Somerville.
Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma has a population of 22 tufted puffins, with 7 mated pairs, and successful hatches. Unlike in the wild, where they are very sensitive to human activity, they are adjusted to living their lives under human supervision. The zoo provided burrows for them, but Noelle Tremonti, staff biologist and zookeeper at the Rocky Shores area said that they have been digging some of their own also. “All the animals are encouraged to have natural behaviors,” she said. If the tufted puffins breed successfully in confinement, would a solution to their declining population be to release them into the wild? No, say experts in Puffin decline, because it doesn’t address the core environmental issues affecting the decline. “While reintroduction is mentioned in the state’s puffin recovery plan, it is not the primary focus and most of the work is on improving puffin habitat in the wild,” wrote the zoo’s general curator, Malia Somerville.
Protection Island resident Marty Bluewater said that he recently counted the island’s herd of black tail deer, some leucistic, and there are close to 50 of them. The deer swam over sometime in the 1990s, according to Hayward, who said that at one point the population grew to nearly 150 individuals when water was provided for them, which no longer happens. The only fresh water available are seeps at a few spots along the beach and moisture on the grasses, said Bluewater. He said he doesn’t think they’ve caused any damage and make “a nice little touch.”
Protection Island resident Marty Bluewater said that he recently counted the island’s herd of black tail deer, some leucistic, and there are close to 50 of them. The deer swam over sometime in the 1990s, according to Hayward, who said that at one point the population grew to nearly 150 individuals when water was provided for them, which no longer happens. The only fresh water available are seeps at a few spots along the beach and moisture on the grasses, said Bluewater. He said he doesn’t think they’ve caused any damage and make “a nice little touch.”
