Find an unknown salmon creek and earn $100

Up until last year, Southeast Alaska's Mitkof Island was home to a creek with some unique salmon: They only turned left. Officially, anyway.

There is a fork in Ohmer Creek, on Mitkof Island. On the west side, the state's Anadromous Waters Catalog, or AWC, reported the presence of all five species of wild Alaska salmon, as well as Dolly Varden and cutthroat trout. On the east side of the fork, according to the AWC, there were only steelhead.

One afternoon last summer, U.S. Forest Service fish biologist Eric Castro, of the Petersburg Ranger District, pointed out juvenile coho salmon were holding steady in the current about his feet on the undocumented east fork. He, hydrologist Heath Whitacre and Taran Snyder, a natural resource specialist working with the Forest Service through VetsWork by AmeriCorps, set out some minnow traps, caught coho, cutthroat and Dolly Varden, took some photos, and set about correcting the record via a new app downloadable to smartphones: Fish Map App.

"It's really fun," Castro said. "We use our tablets, and we're able to capture this information for posterity. It's a game-changer."

This year, people behind the app hope that in addition to the tribes, forest partnerships and experts who used the app last year, everyday Alaskans will download and use the app - and earn $100 for each successful nomination.

"In Alaska, there are a ridiculous number of lakes and streams that probably, at least if they're connected to the ocean, support some sort of anadromous fish," said Aaron Poe, the network program officer at the Alaska Conservation Foundation, who works on the app through the Northern Latitudes Partnership.

The partnership includes the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Northern Latitudes Partnership and the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Tribal Government, which made the app possible through their Indigenous Sentinels Network.

According to the Department of Fish and Game, it counts almost 20,000 streams, rivers or lakes around the state "specified as important for the spawning, rearing or migration of anadromous fish." However, based upon thorough surveys of a few drainages, it believes that number is much higher. "Until these habitats are inventoried, they will not be protected under state of Alaska law."

"Even in urban or town-based settings, there are opportunities to get things mapped," Poe said.

Last year, the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe, Prince of Wales Tribal Conservation District and Petersburg Ranger District documented and nominated about 10 miles of habitat around Petersburg and Kake, as well as a previously unmapped anadromous tributary on East Ohmer Creek.

"Even just by launching this app, we got 13 more. But we'd love it to be 1,300 more," Poe said.

Each of those nominations, if successful, will earn the finder $100.

Poe noted that climate change adds a new element to the catalog. "With the rapid and accelerating climate change that Alaska is facing, fish are moving to different habitats and they're leaving other habitats. So not only do we have this huge system, we have a huge and dynamic system," he said.

Citizen science, Castro said, is "something that's underutilized in our land management practices. There are plenty of people who walk up these streams and know that there are anadromous fish there. And now they have the ability to help be a part of this process of increasing the knowledge of our state's anadromous waters."

For more information on downloading the app, go to http://www.alaskafishmapping.org. Text "fish" to 1-855-736-4949 and you'll get an automated response asking you what area you're interested in mapping. Reply with a community name and you'll get a text with the current Anadromous Waters Catalog map of the area.

Follow the app instructions to nominate a stream. Photos of sport-caught anadromous fish, wild salmon, trout or other species in the streams, juvenile fish, and even spawned out carcasses work. Species must, however, be clearly identifiable.

Mary Catharine Martin is the communications director of SalmonState, an Alaska-based organization that works to ensure Alaska remains a place where wild salmon and people can continue to thrive.