SEQUIM — Spawning pink salmon, which are swimming up the Dungeness River in what could add up to record numbers, are now highly visible from the Dungeness River’s Railroad Bridge.

The extraordinary upstream swarm of “humpback” salmon, fondly called “humpies,” will likely be a major attraction at this year’s 12th Dungeness River Festival on Friday and Saturday at Railroad Bridge Park, which is operated by the Dungeness River Audubon Center on riverside acreage owned by the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe.

The event is put on by the river center.

“This is the biggest run in 10 years,” said Bob Boekelheide, director of the Dungeness River Audubon Center for that period.

He predicts the run, which can be viewed from Railroad Bridge, will be more than double that of 2009.

That year had a run of about 30,000 pinks, which average about 4 to 5 pounds each, compared with the larger spawning Dungeness chinook, which range from 10 to 30 pounds.

It could even rival the 2001 run of 80,000, Boekelheide said, watching spawners from Railroad Bridge last Friday morning.

The biggest pink run came in at about 400,000 in 1963.

Pink salmon typically run every two years.

Far fewer spawning chinook salmon were also visible Friday in the river, which originates at Mount Constance in the Olympics and has the second steepest gradient in the continental U.S.

Boekelheide said he was concerned that a flood like that in December could wash out the redds, or nests for salmon eggs, the females lay.

Females lay about 3,000 eggs each.

“It’s the risk they take,” Boekelheide said.

The redds are fertilized by the male salmon, or bucks, who gently swim over them.

Bucks spawn until they die, adding nutrients to the waterway.

The faint odor of rotting fish carcasses wafted near the bridge Friday.

Plans to retire

Last week Boekelheide announced that he was resigning as director of the Dungeness River Audubon Center, effective at year’s end.

Boekelheide, 59, who has served as the leader of the center at Railroad Bridge Park, 2151 Hendrickson Road, since it first opened in late 2001, said he will make frequent returns as an educator and bird expert.

A former wildlife biologist and high school science teacher in Port Angeles and Sequim, Boekelheide said he wants time to write a book or two and possibly get into ecotourism that involves bird-watching trips.

He also wants to do some traveling and take care of his 85-year-old father in Los Angeles.

“This has just been a joy to be involved with the river center,” Boekelheide said as he stood inside the facility full of specimens of taxidermied mammals and birds known to live in and around the Dungeness Valley and Olympic Mountains.

“I guess having a job where you can be involved with nature and people is why it has been like that,” he said.

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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.