EDMONDS — Cali Weber walked along the gravely beach at Picnic Point, a tape measure trailing behind her. When the coil reached the end, Weber couched down, scooping sand into two plastic bags.

While she was yards away from Puget Sound’s waters, and to the naked eye she seemed to just be gathering the mixture of pebbles beneath her feet, she was actually looking for fish eggs.

Weber is a marine ecology intern for Snohomish County’s Surface Water Management Department, and on Tuesday morning, she and her supervisor, Joycelyn Blue, a planner for the department, conducted their monthly data collection for forage fish eggs .

Forage fish , also commonly known as bait fish, are small schooling fish like herring, sardines, sand lance and smelt. Because the group lays in the middle of marine

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