PORT ANGELES — Elwha River, open wide.

Well, open your mouth, lengthen your channel and stick out what might become a new spit east of the estuary that’s changing daily at the whim of an unshackled river.

Aerial photographs of the Elwha — fed by sediment no longer impeded by hydroelectric dams — show it simultaneously elongating its course seaward, widening what one could call a delta, and “smearing” sediment along the shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca in what’s starting to look like a spit.

That’s not to say that’s what will happen, according to Anne Shaffer of the Coastal Watershed Institute, because everything the unbound Elwha does is unanticipated.

“With dam removal, its always something new,” she said Friday. “We expect only the unexpected.”

Meanwhile, it’s certain the river is building a new estuary and changing salinity, with what once was nearshore becoming estuary and what was estuary turning to freshwater.

1908 maps

If the Elwha’s new deposits endure, they might mimic a spit that was substantial enough to include on maps in 1908, when sediment snaked down shorelines both west and east of the river’s mouth.

This week, Shaffer and her colleagues will perform ecological sampling on the newly created stretch of river.

While they won’t make predictions, they’ll hope to find more of the steelhead and bull trout they’ve already documented returning to the Elwha.

They also hope to find more long fin smelt and eulachon, commonly called candlefish because they were so rich in oil they could be strung on wicks and burned.

The candlefish had been absent from the area for 60 years.

One of Shaffer’s adages is, “As soon as the habitat’s available, the fish will use it.”

Seeing that adage come true is “a very heartlifting story,” she said last week.

“It doesn’t take a long time for these ecosystems to start to repair. It’s shocking how fish are responding in a positive way.”

The dams were removed in a $325 million Elwha River restoration project that began in September 2011.

Elwha Dam was fully removed by March 2012, and the last of Glines Canyon Dam was destroyed in August 2014.

Sediment trapped behind the dams has flowed down the river and is rebuilding the mouth.

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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.