♪♪
-Our job is to capture that water,
make sure it stays clean and fresh.
-See what it takes to keep Seattle's drinking water
among the most pristine in the country.
These raptors have moved from the suburbs to the city,
but are rarely seen.
-Oh, there she goes to the nest.
-We'll give you a glimpse.
-The Seattle Aquarium and the port
use a special drone to explore a vital resource in Puget Sound.
These stories and more next on "CityStream."
♪♪
Hello, I'm Dennis Bounds,
and welcome to "CityStream"
from the new Ocean Pavilion.
After years of construction,
this stunning addition to the Seattle Aquarium
transports visitors across the Pacific
to a vibrant reef ecosystem known as the Coral Triangle.
That's a huge area
that encompasses the tropical waters of the Philippines,
Malaysia and Indonesia.
Just ahead, details on the Ocean Pavilion's three main habitats,
including the Reef, a 500,000-gallon tank
that gives visitors a close-up view of leopard sharks,
eagle rays, and bluespotted stingrays.
This impressive facility underscores
the importance of caring for the world's oceans
and all bodies of water, for that matter.
A prime example --
Seattle has some of the purest drinking water in the nation.
Many other cities source their water from local rivers,
the same rivers used for recreation and commerce,
but not Seattle.
Michael Crowe explains where our drinking water comes from
and how Seattle Public Utilities keeps it pristine.
♪♪
-The topography here in the Cascade Mountains
and the Puget Lowlands is varied and complex.
We have mountain ridges here and river valleys
and this natural lake basin here.
I'm Amy LaBarge.
I am the watershed management division director here
at Seattle Public Utilities.
I think a lot of people are unsure of
where their water comes from.
And here in Seattle,
everybody's water comes from two source supply watersheds
up in the Cascade Mountains.
The larger source of your drinking water
is the Cedar River,
which is what we're looking at here.
And a lot of people also get their water
from the Tolt River watershed.
You are in the Cedar River Municipal Watershed
on the shores of Chester Morse Lake,
your primary drinking-water supply.
We now serve 1.6 million customers with Seattle water.
We collect snow in the winter,
and that helps feed the water supply.
We also have a lot of rain during the fall,
winter, and spring.
We are witnessing the water cycle right now
with a little bit of rain,
and the trees are releasing some of that moisture,
and the clouds are evaporating.
Our job is to capture that water,
make sure it stays clean and fresh and pure
in the source supply watersheds
and manage the water to balance objectives of water supply,
fish habitat, and flood protection.
This watershed is unique in the nation
because the city owns nearly 100% of it
and can then avoid filtering this system.
All of the land that you see, all of the forests that you see,
is helping to support the health of this system
and capture that rain and snow.
And as it melts off, it feeds into this lake
and on down the Cedar River system.
We need to keep this landscape undeveloped.
We need to continue to maintain closed watershed
and protect against unsupervised public access.
-We're standing on Masonry Dam,
and directly behind us is Masonry Pool,
and behind Masonry Pool is Chester Morse Lake.
And those two lakes form all of our Cedar River
water supply system.
We say it's approximately two-thirds
of our total water supply.
My name is Elizabeth Garcia.
I'm in the water resources section
at Seattle Public Utilities,
where I manage our planning team.
This dam helps us to capture more water.
We are currently at peak refill season.
The water level doesn't get any higher than this.
We are experiencing more low-snowpack years
than we used to.
They seem to be occurring more frequently,
so we're relying on those tools of dynamic management
more year to year in order to ensure
that we refill our reservoirs.
SPU has invested in multiple ways in monitoring
and measuring the snowpack in the mountains,
and we're able to understand
how much snow is being accumulated relative to average.
So, this last year was a below-average snow year.
And last year we had a drought in most of the state.
That meant
that we let that low flood season lake elevation
actually come up a little bit.
We were holding more water than we typically would
if we had the normal amount of snow.
We talk about climate change often.
We plan for it continuously.
The utility has actually been planning for
climate change impacts to the water supply since 2000.
And we've increased our investment
both in terms of manpower and technical expertise
in understanding climate change
so that we can better plan for it.
♪♪
I just think that we are so lucky to be able to have water
that comes off of this landscape
and that we're able to protect it
and, you know, manage the forest for ecosystem health
in order to serve such a booming metropolitan region.
You know, the disconnect between where our water comes from
and the lack of people here and how that protection,
you know, makes this such a valuable resource
for our growing city.
It just astounds me.
-This is the lifeblood of the city.
This watershed is incredibly precious.
This is a very high quality,
natural asset that the City of Seattle owns
to protect your drinking water supply.
Your water is pure from the start
here from the Cedar River Municipal Watershed
and the South Fork Tolt.
-In 2023,
Seattle Public Utilities asked customers
to voluntarily conserve water until the fall rains arrived.
Well, this year the fall rains are here,
but the utility still says it's important to conserve water.
And they say the best tips are to quickly fix leaks at home
and consider changing to more efficient faucets,
toilets, and shower heads.
Next, they've moved into your neighborhood,
but are rarely seen.
More on the arrival of Cooper's hawks
as "CityStream" continues.
♪♪
-During the past 25 years, a predator has been on the move,
leaving the forest behind to stalk their prey in the city.
We're talking about the Cooper's hawk.
It's now Seattle's most common medium-size woodland raptor,
but few people know about them
because of their stealthy habits.
Producers Annabel and Pete Cassam have more.
[ Birds calling ]
♪♪
-Cooper's hawks are masters at concealment
and stealthy movement without really trying.
They're just hard to see and hard to follow.
Very, very good at what they do.
And the more I study them,
the more respect I have for their ability
to make a living in an urban/suburban environment.
♪♪
The Cooper's hawks evolved as a forest hawk,
and over the last 30 years they have started moving into suburbs
and urban areas all across North America.
They've done so well,
they're the most common hawk in Seattle now,
but also the least seen.
I've always been interested in nature.
Oh, there she goes to the nest.
So I was a member of the Woodland Park Zoo,
and there was a class being offered --
hawk watching in western Washington.
And I said, that looks interesting.
And I signed up for it and it changed the path of my life.
And I ended up spending 17 years studying
the peregrine nesting population in the San Juan Islands.
So that's where I got started.
The founder of
the Cooper's hawk study
did it for nine years,
and he approached Martin Muller and myself
about taking over the study
in 2012, and we fell for it.
And it's been great fun and a lot of work.
There they are. That's her.
This is mid-April,
and what happens is courtship gets more and more serious,
nest building gets more frequent,
and at some point they start laying eggs.
There he goes, up to the nest.
She's in the nest now.
She bumped him out.
So we're about ready for the earliest sites
to lay eggs and start incubating.
And then they become impossible to find
because they're so secretive.
We are trying to find as many nesting pairs as we can
to measure the density of the population in the city.
And it's like the males sometimes say like, "Keek!"
Like, "Honey, watch me. I'm making a nest."
And he'll fly up into the nest
and deposit a stick and make another like, "Keek!"
This is going to be a great nest.
I hope they use it.
♪♪
We started Urban Raptor Conservancy seven years ago
in order to acquire funding to do the rat poison study.
We cast about for funding,
and then Patagonia came to the rescue.
And they have funded our rat poison study completely.
They've been absolutely wonderful.
♪♪
It's right up in this Doug fir.
Yeah, this is another long-standing nesting site
in West Seattle.
[ Birds calling ]
So this nest last year fledged four or five kids.
Big picture for Urban Raptor Conservancy is birds of prey
in the urban habitat --
how do they interact with humans?
We have a group of volunteers
that follow one or several Cooper's hawk nests.
-Last year was my first year as a volunteer.
So I primarily monitor the nests in West Seattle.
You know, they're a silent bird until it's breeding season.
So it's -- it's fun to sort of witness
that secretive forest hawk during a time of year
when you can find them.
-Today is May 20th,
and these birds continue to incubate their eggs.
They should be hatching in the next week or two.
And the male's job is to bring her food periodically
and take over incubating while she eats and takes a rest break.
Cooper's hawks have a very long tail,
and we jokingly refer to that as the telltale tail.
That tells you there's an incubating bird up there.
The females are almost twice the size of a male.
It's one of the biggest differences in raptor species.
It's June 19th.
We've got at least three chicks
who are about halfway through the nestling phase.
Clumsy little white balls of down.
Just starting to show some dark-brown feather growth.
And at five weeks, they'll be full-grown and fully feathered.
The male is off hunting,
and the female is standing guard,
just out of sight of the young,
and she'll come take the food from him,
and then take it up to the nest and feed the young.
♪♪
Yeah, Cooper's hawks love the Seattle park system.
Last year, 40 of the 66 nests were in Seattle parks
and greenbelt properties.
Big nesting trees and lots of prey.
They're not just hunting in the parks where they nest.
They'll also hunt the neighborhoods.
The downside of urban living for Cooper's hawks
are, number one, window hits.
They have not figured out what glass is.
Number two is exposure to rat poison
from eating too many rats.
It's August 1st, and we're in a backyard in West Seattle,
and we're attempting to put ID bands
on some recently fledged juvenile Cooper's hawks.
We got two so far.
The can keeps her calm and keeps her under control.
-All right. We've got one, one, three, four.
-The bands allow us to track how far they migrate
or disperse
and how long they live.
So, this bird has a perfect plumage.
There's no fault bars or signs of stress or hunger strike.
She's in perfect condition.
She'll wear these white tips off in a couple of weeks.
♪♪
Last year we had 66 nesting attempts --
55 were successful --
and 200 fledglings.
♪♪
As we follow the population of Cooper's hawks,
it's essentially tripled in the last 13 years.
So they're thriving right now.
♪♪
Cooper's hawks know
just when you're going to look away for just a second.
And you take your eye off them and poof,
they're gone without a trace.
♪♪
-The Urban Raptor Conservancy counted 65 nest-building
Cooper's hawk pairs in the city this year.
51 of those pairs produced 182 offspring.
Of those, some 34 fledglings were banded.
If you'd like to learn more about local Cooper's hawks,
check out this website --
UrbanRaptor.org.
Just ahead, a closer look at Seattle's newest attraction,
the Ocean Pavilion,
when "CityStream" returns.
♪♪
-And welcome back to "CityStream"
from Seattle Aquarium's new Ocean Pavilion.
And joining us is Meg McCann,
who is the chief operating officer of the aquarium.
Thanks for being with us.
-Thanks for having me.
-Spectacular building.
For those people who plan to come here
or should be coming here,
when they walk through the doors,
what should they expect to see?
-Well, before they even walk through the doors,
they're going to look up
and they're going to look into our largest habitat
through the Oculus.
And then they'll get a first look into
our Indonesian ecosystem that we built here in the aquarium.
And once they walk into the aquarium,
they'll have an opportunity to look into the Reef
and see a multi-story habitat that's featuring eagle rays,
sharks, and lots of schools of fish.
-It's very cool.
And I noticed today a lot of kids in the area,
a lot of kids come here.
-It's fabulous.
We have welcomed a lot of schoolkids to come in,
and this is a great place to learn about our Salish Sea
and how we're connected to the Coral Triangle,
which is an area on the other side of the world
that's experiencing the same things we are
about ocean acidification,
plastics in the water, overfishing.
And so our goal is that these kids will grow up
and learn to take care of our one ocean.
-And they'll know about the Coral Triangle,
which is many, many, many miles away from Seattle.
-Yeah, except we are all experiencing
the same challenges.
And so the challenges that are going to solve for us
here in Washington will solve for our folks in Indonesia.
-I notice that there's so much to learn here,
but you have some tech help, too,
for those who come in and want to learn as much
as they can about the ocean.
-Yeah, it's so cool.
When you first come into the Ocean Pavilion,
you'll be in an immersive space surrounded by video
from the Coral Triangle and also the Salish Sea.
In addition,
when you go to our many habitats,
you'll have a fish finder
that will allow you to identify what's in the habitats.
And probably the coolest thing of all for most of our guests,
especially our younger guests,
is the At Home in the Ocean exhibit,
where kids are going to be at eye level
with many different species and animals,
and they'll also have a chance to choose their own adventure
and having technology-enabled learning.
-There's a lot of touch screens in the area.
All you have to do is hit -- hit the button
and you'll be able to find out a whole lot
about a specific exhibit.
-Yeah, kids love it.
It tells them all about the animals that are there
and the environment that they live in.
-This next question, I feel like we need the "Jaws" music.
I understand the aquarium is home for the --
is it the only endangered shark breeding program in the world?
-Not the only endangered shark breeding in the world,
but one of them.
And so we play a really key role
with the Indo-Pacific leopard shark.
We're part of a consortium of many other
global conservation organizations.
And so we're part of the breeding program
to help re-shark the Indonesian ocean.
-So don't be afraid of the sharks.
Be happy that we're able to breed many
and keep them alive in the oceans.
-Absolutely.
-Okay, final question.
What are the hours, the best way to get tickets?
And if you get a ticket,
do you have access to the aquarium as well?
-So, one ticket allows you access to all three
of our buildings.
The best way to get tickets is to buy online in advance.
But you're also welcome to come to our door,
and we are open seven days a week,
and I would just check our website for holiday hours.
-Very good.
Meg McCann,
who's chief operating officer of the Seattle Aquarium,
thank you for being with us.
-Thank you.
-Next on "CityStream,"
why this high-tech drone is probing
the depths of Puget Sound.
That's next.
♪♪
-Puget Sound behind me was once filled with kelp forest,
long strands of algae that produce food
and provide habitat for fish and wildlife.
Some parts of the sound have seen kelp forest decline,
but there's also been a resurgence in Elliott Bay.
The Seattle Aquarium has partnered
with the Port of Seattle
to explore what's happening.
And as Pete Cassam explains,
a special underwater drone is helping researchers.
-We have a century agenda goal to become the cleanest,
greenest port in North America.
-We also have goals around habitat restoration.
-We're interested in learning more about
how we can create conditions in which kelp can thrive.
-Kelp is really the manna of the sea.
It provides numerous services
that enable fish and wildlife to thrive.
Elliott Bay is ringed with kelp, not continuously,
but there are certain chunks of the waterfront
that have these mats of kelp forest.
This is an area of urban kelp habitat.
-What we're seeing are kind of more substantial kelp beds
in the north part of Elliot Bay,
and then patchier, smaller kelp beds further south.
-The genus of this species is Nereocystis,
which means mermaid's bladder,
and that's what keeps it floating at the surface.
So you can see the fronds are rather like
the hair of the mermaid.
And it's really quite a beautiful sight,
but it's also remarkable.
It can grow 100 feet in a season,
like a foot a day.
These are kelp forests -- just like trees in the woods,
these forests allow for not only plants and animals
to survive around them, but also can sequester carbon.
And we have a strategic relationship now
with the Seattle Aquarium to see why it grows in some places
and not others,
and taking those lessons
and applying it to our habitat restoration efforts.
-We're experimenting and trying to learn more about
how to restore not only kelp,
but also eelgrass beds and oyster beds,
which are all keystone kind of habitats here in Puget Sound.
♪♪
We are in front of the breakwater at Elliot Bay Marina,
and there's an extensive kelp bed
that runs along the entire, um, breakwater here.
And today looks like a pretty good day
to see what these kelp beds look like here.
Part of our partnership with the Seattle Aquarium,
we are using an underwater remotely operated vehicle.
-ROV Nereo, short for Nereocystis.
And we do indeed use an Xbox game controller
to fly the vehicle.
That's good.
And we have cameras facing downwards
and a camera facing forwards,
and we have lights and various sensor equipment.
And our objective is to gather as much video as possible.
♪♪
So we're conducting what's called benthic surveys.
So we're looking to gather information
about what species are present and where they are
and what types of substrate they associate with.
So conducting about 100-meter transects.
-Gain is 30%.
-Can see all sorts of cobble, hard substrate.
We are 39.2 feet beneath the surface.
-What we see out there is, you know,
these -- these really rich and vibrant kelp beds.
There is a lot of understory algal species as well.
-Oh, and a nice ling cod right down there.
-Oh, yeah. Look at that!
-Oh, great. -I can go take a peek.
-We're able to see that.
And we're also able to see this bull kelp canopy.
-We've seen large bull kelp declines
in parts of Puget Sound.
And our overarching objective is to better understand
what types of substrate bull kelp attach to and grow on.
So what we're doing for this project
is training AI algorithms to know what species are.
So this is a sea star. This is a sea urchin.
This is a fish.
-Like acrobats out there. -Yeah. Yeah.
-So one of the hypotheses for
why bull kelp doesn't do well in certain areas,
there's some preliminary observational evidence
that kelp crabs may be contributing
to bull kelp failure to thrive, essentially.
-So that has led to another initiative
that we're hoping to implement in 2023.
And that's to place octopus pots,
octopus homes to attract octopus to Smith Cove.
And they eat the kelp crab,
and we're hoping that that might help the population of kelp.
-And this is all part of what the port sees
as part of its responsibility to be a steward of the environment
that we do business in.
And I think this is good for the habitat,
but also those of us that depend on a healthy Puget Sound.
♪♪
-Getting myself into a hot mess of kelp.
[ Laughter ]
-And so what we're hoping to get out of this partnership
is just really understanding why kelp are living where they are,
and what conditions they're thriving under,
and so potentially we can replicate those
in future restoration projects.
-That's the most tangled we've been.
-We're just getting a clue at the beginning
of how important this species is to the recovery
of the Salish Sea at large.
-That wraps up this edition of "CityStream"
from Seattle Aquarium's new Ocean Pavilion.
If you'd like to learn more about this stunning new exhibit,
check out their website, SeattleAquarium.org,
and click on Ocean Pavilion.
I'm Dennis Bounds.
Thanks for watching.
♪♪