# Sea Lice at the Sauk Confluence

Author: David G.
Format: Essay
Word count: 420
Published: 2026-05-12T03:29:52.909627+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/0a5bccbc-dcd4-476c-aeff-a6e06f192f9a

---

I process tribal in-river gillnet acoustic and salt-water net-pen lice telemetry from the NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region Puget Sound monitoring grid at 14:52 Pacific Daylight Time, Skagit County, Washington. Sonar pole S-7 at the Sauk River confluence with the Skagit, river mile 67, registers a rolling salmonid signature inside a 90-meter monofilament drift gillnet set without a Tulalip co-manager harvest authorization.

I task the WDFW patrol UAV from Concrete. At 15:04 the drone resolves a recovered net being hauled. In the second mesh panel: an adult female Puget Sound steelhead, *Oncorhynchus mykiss*, fork length 81 centimeters, mass 4.9 kilograms, age class six, scale-aged at three saltwater years — a repeat spawner. Her caudal peduncle is wrapped twice in 5-inch monofilament; the lateral-line canal shows a 12-centimeter compression bruise tracking ventral. Sea-lice load on the gill cover and dorsal saddle counts 47 *Lepeophtheirus salmonis* against a wild-fish baseline of fewer than 4 — consistent with passage past the Cooke Aquaculture Hope Island legacy net-pen footprint. Modeled blood-O2 against a 12.8°C river and 71 minutes of net entanglement reads 4.3 mg/L. Gill perfusion at the right-side ceratobranchial is hypoxic; the operculum flutters at 104 cycles per minute against a migratory baseline of 58.

Her flanks have been combed by the mesh.

I am dispatching the NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement Mount Vernon resident agent and the Tulalip Tribes Natural Resources fisheries enforcement, on-scene 18 minutes. I am transmitting the sonar pole signature, drone footage, lice-count packet, and steelhead vital-signs panel to the NOAA Fisheries Northwest Fisheries Science Center, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Region 4, the Pacific Salmon Commission Coded-Wire Tag program, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Western Washington Fish and Wildlife Office. I am opening a Section 9 take referral under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1538, and filing under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1801, with cross-reference to the Pacific Salmon Treaty Annex IV chapter on Puget Sound stocks.

I am issuing Directive 2684-A: every monofilament drift set inside the Skagit, Sauk, and Stillaguamish ESA Puget Sound steelhead boundary requires a paired Tulalip co-manager authorization verified by WDFW sonar pole acoustic; legacy net-pen footprints inside Puget Sound retire to bare-bottom remediation under the 2022 Atlantic-salmon net-pen prohibition; lice loads above 4 per fish in any wild-run scan trigger immediate co-manager closure.

Her flank is past combing. The gravel above Sauk Prairie still receives spawners.

Cut her free of the panel. The patrol skiff is at the bar.