Boat trips from nearby Port Townsend, Washington provide ecotourism visits for viewing wildlife from the adjacent waters.

[7] The island contains one of the last two nesting colonies of tufted puffins in the Puget Sound area.

Visitors may view the island by boat; a 200-yard off-shore buffer is enforced to ensure adult birds are not flushed from their nests.

The waters surrounding the North Olympic Peninsula support five additional refuges: Flattery Rocks, Quillayute Needles, Copalis, Dungeness, and San Juan Islands.

Protection Island is managed as part of the Washington Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Complex.