In the Swirling Waters of Burley Lagoon: Part 2, High Tide

Along a stretch of distant shoreline, terns are hunting. Sunstruck, they gleam brilliant white above a verge of salt marsh and forest shadowed by roaming autumn clouds. Flapping hard, shaking off water as they gain altitude, the terns do not wait for their flight to steady before they fold and knife into the lagoon again. There must be fish everywhere.

My kayak drifts that way. I gaze over the side, hoping for a glimpse of a fish, and am instead riveted by the scummy planktonic bubbles that drift along with me. They are on a slightly different trajectory, my kayak’s center of mass being lower in the water. Below them, also moving at yet another angle, and faster, are the dull flashes of shells and rocks on the lagoon’s bottom.

It is trippy, these superimposed layers of motion.

In Burley Lagoon you can cover a lot of distance by timing the tides. On an incoming tide, like this one, salt water pours through the narrow channel under the Purdy Bridge and complexly unbraids to fill the lagoon’s 2-mile length and 410 acres. For a moment, all the forces at work on Burley Lagoon — shellfish industry, development, fish passage projects, local environmental campaigns, fecal coliform, even a former Superfund site — pale in comparison to the swirl of the water itself.

When I arrive at the distant shoreline, the terns are gone. Tiny forage fish burst from the water like the splashes from thrown rocks. They are too small to leave ripples. Just overhead an osprey scans the surface. It does not dive. We share the afternoon.

This northeastern corner of the lagoon is undeveloped. Mudbanks topped with thick grass and reeds and wild roses are scalloped with hidden coves. Occasionally, a dragonfly makes a darting mission over the water, looking me straight in the eye as it comes before veering off to catch unseen prey. A band of sandpipers appears among reeds, silent as stones.

Afternoon shades into evening.

The intensification of shellfish farming in Burley Lagoon has put a spotlight on its water quality. In 1999, the Washington Department of Health found elevated levels of fecal coliform and downgraded the shellfish growing areas. In 2018, parts of the lagoon were downgraded again. A watershed protection district led by Pierce and Kitsap counties attempts to address the problem, which is really many problems, including failing home septic systems and poor management of pets and livestock, as well as ongoing development.

Many septic systems have been replaced, and though more are discovered all the time, fecal coliform levels now seem to be improving. One of the perks of the attention has been the research it has prompted on Burley Lagoon’s physical dynamics.

Like the flow of sediment. The lagoon has three energy zones. Where I am now, it is Burley Creek’s energy that dominates. Tidalscouring is minimal. All the fine silt carried by the creek from its 10-square-mile watershed falls out here and makes the bottom mucky and inhospitable for most shellfish. In contrast, the outer third of the lagoon is dominated by tidal energy, which sweeps fine sediments away and leaves a perfect sandy or rocky bottom for growing clams and oysters and geoducks. In between is a mixed-energy zone where tides, creeks and wind all play a role.

Tweak any of these energy sources or the sources of sediment, and you could have a radically different environment.

The former Strandley-Manning Superfund site, halfway up the western shore, where a business recycled electrical transformers, was contaminated with PCBs and dioxin. Mitigation happened in the late 1980s, and the site has been declared clean since 2001, but locals question the rigor of sediment testing.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has been planting mussels in the lagoon as part of a statewide effort to track toxins in the marine environment. They test for PCBs, PBDEs, organochlorine pesticides, PAHs, heavy metals, and the tire dust chemical that kills coho salmon and are considering tests for estrogenic compounds, pharmaceutical compounds, perfluorinated compounds and alkylphenols.

What about eutrophication, when an enclosed body of water is loaded with fertilizer runoff and blooms algae and then suffocates? Or what about the availability of phytoplankton, the main food source for all these shellfish? Is there enough to support everything farmed as well as wild?

These questions led to studies of how water moves through the lagoon. As you might guess, it’s complicated, with varying tides and streamflow and wave energy. Researchers discovered a gyre that swirls just outside the lagoon’s entrance.

Yet more than 50% of the lagoon’s water is exchanged within two days in the south end and four days in the north end. That is a lot of turnover, more than enough to prevent eutrophication and circulate a fresh supply of phytoplankton. According to estimates, farmed shellfish consume less than 17% of the available food.

The water here is motionless and dark. I look for Burley Creek. It reveals itself as a subtle drift of floating willow leaves.

I enter, and the creek winds through banks of asters, fireweed, goldenrod and Pacific crabapple trees. There are honeybees and hoverflies, rosehips and hummingbirds. The water is silent, not a ripple until I round a horseshoe bend and spook a salmon. Its back and tail fin flash dark gray, almost green.

For a long time, I float in this secret world, immersed in fruit and flowers, letting the current spin me slowly downstream. Dusk comes.

After that, it is a long paddle back across the lagoon’s expanse. Long white clouds like furrows are reflected in the dusky water.

The strangest thing happens. I approach a floating wrack line. Sea lettuce and maple leaves and eelgrass and bubbles — even the kidney-colored body of a dead shore crab — stretch in a narrow band across the width of the lagoon. The seaweed known as Turkish towel softly scrapes the kayak’s hull as I cross the line. Several paddle strokes later I decide to pull out my journal and make note of this feature.

With my paddle at rest, the kayak mysteriously slides to a stop. It then drifts backward. The lagoon, as if sweeping itself from both ends, carries me back to its collection of floating remnants and deposits me there silently, like I’m just another scrap of life caught up in the daily cleaning routine of its crosscurrents.