The key to a healthy Puget Sound is productive shoreline habitat—the Alliance envisions Puget Sound’s shorelines to be healthy, vibrant, clean, and full of life. Because human communities interact with the Sound most frequently along its shorelines, elements that are broken or don’t function well are most apparent in the nearshore environment. The Alliance and our partners will work towards the ambitious goal of restoring 100 miles of shorelines by June 2009; this will include installing soft-shore alternatives to bulkheads, removing creosote logs, and restoration of native plant communities along the shorelines.

Restoring Our Shorelines: Places to Learn More

Conservation Planning
The Nature Conservancy is involved in restoration efforts throughout the Puget Sound region.  Using science-based planning, the Conservancy has developed a map of high priority areas for protecting biodiversity both around the Sound and throughout the Pacific Northwest. 

Puget Sound Nearshore Partnership
The Puget Sound Nearshore Partnership is a large-scale initiative that affords a unique opportunity to tackle some of the foremost habitat restoration needs in Puget Sound Nearshore Project goals are to identify significant ecosystem problems, evaluate potential solutions, and restore and preserve critical nearshore habitat.

The Governor’s Puget Sound Initiative
Governor Gregoire’s initiative to clean up the Sound by 2020. Also visit here, for information on the Department of Ecology.

Shellfish Restoration
Restoring native shellfish to their historic habitats is a key strategy for improving water quality and protecting marine biodiversity. Since 1999, Puget Sound Restoration Fund has spearheaded a broad-based effort to rebuild populations of native Olympia oysters in Washington state and enhance a marine species all but decimated earlier in the century by pollution, habitat loss and over-harvest. For information on shellfish restoration around the country, visit here.

Soft Shore Restoration
Shoreline armoring—such as bulkheads—is one of the biggest threats to the health of Puget Sound’s shorelines. Alternatives to shoreline armoring exist and where appropriate should be utilized to protect forage fish spawning habitat and coastal processes. Soft shore restoration uses indigenous materials (gravel, sand, logs and root masses) in designs that mimic natural beach shape and processes. Soft shore restoration is a successful long-term method of addressing the erosion concerns that led to shoreline armoring while at the same time restoring degraded habitat.

Derelict Gear Removal
Derelict fishing gear—nets, lines, crab and shrimp traps or other equipment that is abandoned or lost from fishing vessels and left unattended in the marine environment—poses numerous threats to marine animals and people. Abandoned gear may not decompose for years, or even decades, and in that time can entangle swimmers and divers, kill or wound marine mammals, fish and birds that become entangled in nets, and compromise marine ecosystems and species.

Creosote Removal
Creosote contaminated materials have been observed throughout beaches in Puget Sound. These materials are frequently broken pilings that have fallen from derelict docks and piers or railroad ties from nearby tracks. These materials, whether freshly washed up or buried in the intertidal for decades, are found to be leaching creosote on a continual basis. The Northwest Straits Commission and Washington Department of Natural Resources are working with partners to locate and remove creosote treated wood from beaches around the Sound.