NORTHWEST PERPLEXED BY MISSING SALMON

[Anonymous]

Northwest perplexed by missing salmon
Chinook run hasn’t happened yet along Columbia
River

PORTLAND,Ore. –
Usually by now, the Columbia River’s spring chinook salmon are heading upstream
over fish ladders in the tens of thousands to spawn. Not this year.

Fish biologists had
predicted a spring run of about 229,000 chinooks at the Bonneville Dam, about
140 miles from the Pacific Ocean. As of Tuesday, near the customary midpoint of
the spring run, only about 200 had been counted there.

“It’s a
never-before-seen scarcity,” said Charles Hudson of the Columbia River
Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.

It’s so bad that
the Indian tribes on the river had to get salmon somewhere else for their
ceremonial celebration marking the return of the fish.

The chinooks enter
the Columbia River from the Pacific at this time of year to return to the
streams where they were hatched two or three years before. There, they spawn and
die.

‘It’s a
mystery’
Scientists say they don’t have an explanation for the
scarcity.

“Nobody knows why,”
said Brian Gorman of the Pacific Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle. “It’s a
mystery.”

Gorman also
described the run as “mysteriously late.”

Most of this year’s
spring run went to sea in 2002 or 2003, said Norman, adding there were no
conditions in those years that would readily explain the dearth of fish this
spring.

Some fish managers
wonder whether low water levels as a result of a dry winter — combined with
murky water caused by recent rains — are keeping chinook from swimming up the
Columbia.

“Spring chinook are
pretty finicky when conditions are abnormal,” said Guy Norman of the Washington
state Department of Fish and Wildlife. “April and early May are the most
significant times for spring chinook movement over the (Bonneville) dam. We’re
hoping for good things to come.”

Count sets
fishing quota
Fish swimming upstream on the Columbia are tallied at the
Bonneville Dam, where they go up fish ladders — which resemble stairs — and swim
past a large window. Their numbers are a factor in setting fishing seasons for
sport, tribal and commercial fishermen.

Hudson, the tribal
spokesman, said he’s optimistic “there are fish out there gathering at the mouth
of the river waiting for some biological trigger to send them up.”

The economic impact
of the small chinook return is not clear.

Fish managers hold
weekly meetings to look at the size of the run and the size of the catch, and
regulators aren’t ready yet to recommend trimming the fishing season, said
Curtis Melcher, marine salmon fisheries manager for the Oregon Department of
Fish and Wildlife.

Melcher said sport
fishermen are catching some chinooks but not as many as usual. He said many of
those caught were bound for the Willamette River and other tributaries below the
dam.

Hudson said the
fish are back in near their usual numbers in the Willamette River, which joins
the Columbia well below the Bonneville Dam, the first dam the returning fish
encounter on their return.

Bonneville is
required to release a certain amount of water past dams to help fish if the
water flow is low to keep young salmon out of hydroelectric turbines. The
turbines kill about 10 percent of the fish that go through them.

“With an impact of
this kind you’re usually talking about hydroelectric operations as a likely
cause,” Hudson said

[Author]

April 21, 2005 at 9:58 AM