Record Salmon Run On the Columbia River – Victory for Conservationists?
Posted Wednesday, August 4th, 2010, By: Michael
On August 1st The Oregonian reported that the Columbia River has experienced a sockeye salmon run that is “the highest since the Bonneville Dam started operating in 1938.”
photo courtesy of Bill Carter
For a little context I asked filmmaker & author Bill Carter what the average run is for the Egegik River in Bristol Bay, Alaska – the river he fished in his acclaimed memoir Red Summer. He said during a typical year, fishermen on the Egegik will pull in close to ten million fish during a 30 day period! Roll on Columbia, roll on!
But despite the relatively positive news, I wondered why this sudden abundance of Columbia River sockeye salmon?
To get some more insight I contacted David Finkel, Director of Development & Communications for Portland’s Wild Salmon Center, an organization whose mission is to identify, understand and protect the best wild salmon ecosystems of the entire Pacific Rim region.
Both Finkel and The Oregonian pointed out the abnormal run may be attributed to several factors including (court mandated) spillage over Columbia River dams and favorable ocean conditions.
Finkel added that many of the returning fish are of hatchery origin. Therefore, they are not considered “wild” fish.
Initially you might be inclined to cast this as a victory for conservationists, or the complex network of hatcheries spanning much of the West Coast. After all, these fish will bring valuable nutrients to ecosystems and fuel the local commercial fishing economy.
However, there is also a significant amount of science suggesting that the hatchery fish that are able to survive in the wild will develop less effective genetic traits as a result of what takes to survive in hatchery conditions – and when they return to spawn they leave fewer offspring than their wild relatives. If you get those hatchery fish breeding with wild fish, then eventually the wild stock suffers. For more information check out this article.
It’s a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” scenario (no pun intended). And it got me wondering about the long-term costs of our current hatchery system. Will salmon evolve to become the cattle of the sea and become dependent on humans to nurture and manage every aspect of their existence? Will we ever see ten million fish in the Columbia?
I don’t pretend to know the answer or to have any solution.
But I do know that in the meantime, David Finkel and the rest of the Wild Salmon Center crew are hard at work preserving the healthiest remaining wild salmon rivers in the entire Pacific Rim region. For more information about their amazing work, check out their website.
Other organizations and people worth checking out:
