Love the Boston Legal about the salmon

I was going to post a rather grim report about farm salmon in Canada nuking all the wild stock up there, but how about this instead? If you haven't already, watch the recap of Boston Legal from this week about the election, fish, sex and mad cow. It's great.

There's a wonderful exchange between Denny and Allan regarding why Denny is voting for McCain.

Allan presses Denny, so Denny finally deadpans that it's to save the wild salmon stocks in Canada.

Huh?

"Yes, you see if McCain wins, many Americans, smart Americans will move to Canada, and they'll figure out how to save the wild salmon."

Obv., McCain didn't win, so the Canadians are going to have to figure out how to save their own fish.

Orcas take a hit

I was dismayed to see both of these stories Saturday morning, about how seven orcas, including the baby, are now assumed dead. And the reason, they probably starved to death because there were not enough salmon to eat.

Now before anyone uses this as an excuse to shoot the sealions again (which I believe orcas do hunt), think about why there aren't enough salmon in the food chain. And it's not because of the sealions.

Photo from the Seattle Times.

A man and his stream

My hubby is actually part of the local Trout Unlimited Chapter and know this guy, profiled today in the Seattle Times.

If we all just did our bit, persistently over the years, I think we would have salmon back in our streams again, and many other critters too. I think I might walk down to Mill Creek Park and take a look around this weekend.

Photo by the Seattle Times.

Baby beavers? I'm there

I'm planning on going up to the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery this weekend.

Not only to visit one of my best friends, who's the exec. director of their foundation, but to see a baby beaver that's been hanging about. Apparently the little guy got stuck in one of the fish ladders and staff tried to get him (or her?) out with a net.

Said beaver got tangled in the net, and the staff tried to bang him out of it.

"No, no, you're going t kill him," shouted Gestin, my friend, who told the staffer to desist. They finally got him out of the net, but he's back. And I'm taking my camera.

There's also a very hopeful heron, eyeing the 25 pound fish swimming upstream. Gestin wondered yesterday just HOW that bird intended to choke down a fish that big.

Save the Salmon, Shoot a Seal

That seems to be the train of thought. And we're kidding ourselves. Even if we killed off the entire species between Seattle and LA, do you really think that the runs - which were once so thick, like the passenger pigeon, - no one ever thought they'd disappear - will come back.

It will take projects like this, at Titlow in Tacoma. It will take more classes like the one held in my Kent neighborhood, convincing residents near streams not to use Weed and Feed, not to use pesticides, not to dump whatever gunk they have in the garage down the drain.

First they try to remove the sealions from the Columbia, only to have one die, probably of stress. Then they find dead ones, shot by upset (take your pick) farmers, fishermen, etc. This brought some interesting comments on the NYT blog.

I'm afraid we're going to have to change our behavior, and tear down a few dams, cancel more than a few salmon seasons to save the fish folks. Shooting sealions isn't going to do it.

Drawing via the news tribune.

Last Time I Checked, Salmon Couldn't Breath in Money

I've been watching over the last couple of months as the stories kept cropping up on the salmon runs in Oregon and California, and I wonder just how soon this problem (the fish simply vanish) will occur here. This comes from Grist, BTW.

Braking a CatchSalmon fishing season canceled in California, heavily
restricted elsewhere
For the first time ever, the Pacific Fisheries
Management Council has voted to cancel the salmon fishing season off the coast
of California and much of Oregon due to exceedingly low populations of chinook salmon in the
Sacramento River area. The restrictions apply to commercial as well as
recreational fishers; only a catch of 9,000 hatchery-raised coho salmon will be
allowed this season by sport fishers off central Oregon. However, since the
imperiled salmon that make up the Sacramento River run rarely venture as far
north as Washington, restrictions there were not as harsh. The council voted to
allow a combined commercial, sport, and tribal catch of 45,000 coho salmon and
77,500 chinook salmon this year off the Washington coast. But overall, the
outlook is still quite bleak. "Collectively, from Canada to Mexico, this will be
the worst ever season off the West Coast," said Don McIssac of the PFMC.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency and
requested federal financial assistance for the state's fishing industry.

Probably soon, as this story tells about the payoff so the dams will stay up, the river will still be used for agriculture, and well the fish, it sucks to be you.

This story today, tells of the season simply being cancelled in Oregon and California because there are no more fish to catch.


Sketch from www.thesalmon.com.ar

As the Salmon go, So go the Smelt?

Apparently so, according to this article in The News Tribune recently. It really bothers me when the bottom of the food chain fish begin to die off. It doesn't bode well on up the line.

Photo from The News Tribune

Salmon news, orca news

I've been collecting string on fish, and mammals that swim of late.

I first spotted this orca story this weekend, talking about the sea wolves going down to California to find something to eat, because presumably, they can't find grub up here (fish, salmon, seals).

In the all things are connected train of thought, part of the reason there may not be enough food to keep the orcas here, can be traced to the environmental degredation that results in fewer fish for them to eat in the first place.

Of course, they might not find the salmon fishing much better in California, according to this article.

Finally, there's an interesting New York Times piece that talks about environmental groups struggling to define what to protect in the age of global warming and changing ecosystems. The article again talks about the effort to save the salmon here, when the fish are having trouble making it upstream due to thermal blocks in the rivers.

Photos courtesy of the Associated Press

Salmon stories in the news

It seemed that every time I picked up the paper this week, salmon were in the news. The first being a federal judge telling the government to get real with its salmon protection laws along the Columbia River according to this PI article.

Then we have King County breaking down levies along the Green River to make more room for salmon habitat, according to this Seattle Times article.

And finally, this story about sea lice that attach themselves to salmon, esp. farmed salmon and then hop (I guess) to wild runs that go through the areas with the farms and wipe out the wild populations.

In case you detest door buster sales, how about watching the fish?

I noted this in my second post, but just in case there are those of you who really, really, really don't want to brave the lines, the malls and the senseless mass consumer gluttony, how about watching the chum do their thing as they swim upstream to spawn now.

There are couple of events I found on Friday for those that want to stay away from the hordes.

The first is at the Carkeek Park at Piper's Creek from noon to 2pm on Friday. The other nearby chum run in the Seattle area is out in Puyallup.The best time for viewing apparently is from now until mid-December at Clark's Creek. Finally, heading out toward the penninsula on Highway 101 is Kennedy Creek, which will be open Friday from 10 am to 4 pm.

Oh, and bit of good news for all salmon - chums, pinks, sockeye and the like. Bush has apparently given up on his bid to chop down all the trees around their streams to appease the timber industry.

Celebrate the Chum!

I'll be looking for more salmon festivities over the next few weeks. But while listening to KPLU this morning, I learned of the Carkeek Salmon Celebration in Seattle that takes place on Nov. 23 from noon - 2 pm. This web site is by the state Fish and Wildlife Department, and lists other events going on at other parks in the area as the chum (still red, I guess, but less flashy than their oncorhynchus sockeye cousins).

This is to view the chum salmon making their way up the creek in the park, and I checked, not that many chum come up the Cedar River, near my house, so I'll have to look elsewhere.

Watching sockeye flirt, one last time

Looking out at the downpour this weekend, I was glad that I attended the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence, last weekend, when at least the sun was shining as about five of us hiked up the Cedar River Watershed, where the public is usually not allowed, to watch sockeye shimmy their way upstream.

Standing by the banks of Landsburg, I watched about 25 of the fish, slowly undulating in the river current. Every once and awhile a male would try to flirt (which amounts to the male flipping its fins in her face) with a female as she was about to create a redd and lay eggs. Or the males would charge at other males, including two-year-old jacks, with the same idea.

Often sunlight would sneak through the cedars and scarlet sparks would erupt from the river, as the band continued its slippery dance. I tried to take a picture, but wouldn't you know it, battery was dead. So I downloaded this free picture from the Manzanita Project at the California Academy of Sciences. Sockeye runs are fading out that far south, where runs once flourished, according to the experts on this trip. Blame global warming.

As frustrating as it might be to fertilize a females eggs, all these fish were going to find further frustration upstream, as Seattle City Light diverted the whole lot of the run into pens and dumped them downstream. The reasoning: too many sockeye (the endangered species are allowed up the river, but not these guys) attracting too many bears that would put too much poop in the river. Seems a bit of a stretch to me, but our cheery guide insisted this was needed to keep the water clean and avoid building a treatment plant.


Some of us, me for one, really didn't buy this reasoning, as we watched 20-lb sockeye jump again and again against their holding tanks. Some of the fish go up the river four times before they give up, spawn and die. The experts on my team questioned how trace elements like phosphorous, is going to get into the inland ecosystem, since generally these elements have only one way of getting into the inland environments: Fish to bears to poop.

At this point, Janice Mathison, from the Seattle Aquarium pipes up "I knew it, poop does make the world go around!"

So what happens with this wonderful creatures when they decide to become saltwater fish and then switch back again? According to Orlay Johnson, a NOAA geneticists, literally the fish have doubled up on genes and turn them on and off as needed. The moon, water temperature, hormones and age all determine which genes are in the "on" position. And that guides when these fish decide, usually after four years -since the eight year cycles have been fished out -to go upstream to flirt, spawn and die.

Closeup photo provided by the Jeremy Sarrow of the California Academy of Sciences/Manzanita Project