The 300-foot-long wetland, anchored along a dock in Ballard, is designed to give young salmon some of the calm, shaded, shallow habitat they’ve lost along the city’s hardened shorelines. “They need every help they can get to survive,” said Nancy Rottle with the University of Washington’s Green Futures Lab.
Since 2022, the Green Futures Lab has partnered with the nonprofit EarthCorps to study whether a constructed floating ecosystem can survive in saltwater and help salmon do the same. “To our knowledge, no one had tested them in salt water,” Rottle said.
Researchers say more than 75% of Seattle’s shorelines have been altered by development, making it harder for young salmon to find the protective nearshore waters they need to grow. The floating wetland tries to bring some of that habitat back by providing shade, food sources and other ecological benefits right at the marina.
“The perfect place to provide habitat that would provide shade for salmon, food for salmon, other aquatic advantages, ecosystem services,” Rottle said.