The first wayside panel of several more to come, this is going on Freeland Beach, a county shoreside park that has just rebuilt their beach to accommodate forage fish. Sure, people get to be here as well, but this is yet another effort to save endangered Orca whales in Puget Sound. Freeland is on Whidbey Island, just east of my studio here in Port Townsend, Washington.

Here’s the jobsite on the beach, an ancient wayside’s soon to be replaced by my new panel.

Just looks like a beach, doesn’t it? But there are good beaches for little fish, and not-so-good ones. The idea is make the beach useful for safety and spawning for little several kinds of small forage fish. These are small, schooling fish that serve as a vital food source for larger predators. Eaten by salmon, then the salmon are caught by orca – because orca are starving. This map below shows the three forage fish species, blue, green and red. The beach is right in the middle of the map.

So, enough science and thanks for reading to here. Here’s the panel sketch with my initial text.

And below the new beach with logs, beach grasses and other native plantings.

And finally, below, here’s a new painting on my Etsy Eifert Gallery, still available as of 3-19-2026. Here’s the link if you want to see more.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

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Or Crater Lake Institute’s website which I also build – viewership of several million a month!