Tag Archives: anadromous fish

FISH HATCHERY – TRYING TO MAKE UP FOR LOST GROUND

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Chinook salmon circling about in a lower holding pond at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery.
Chinook salmon circling about in a lower holding pond at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery.

In the western United States, when something good gets discovered, it seems nothing better to do than to rush to deplete the good – gold, trees, … salmon.  Gold is mined many times at the cost of whatever lived in the area before.  Trees, centuries of age, swept away, sometimes replanted, sometimes not, always with ecological cost.  In the case of salmon, former runs of billions of salmon first suffered from overfishing, taken to extremes.  To finish off the magnificent earlier runs, primeval rivers dammed ending the prehistoric runs.  Fish hatchery to the rescue

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SOMETHING’S FISHY – FISH LADDERS ELEVATE TO THE NEXT LEVEL

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Waters fall over Bonnie Falls with the graffitied fish ladder offering an easier way up on the right.
Waters fall over Bonnie Falls with graffitied fish ladders offering an easier way up on the right.

If you have lived in Portland long enough, you will end up making a visit to visit the fish hatchery at Bonneville Dam, home to Herman the Sturgeon.  The dams along the Columbia River system have hugely curtailed the once humongous runs of salmonids up and down the river and its tributaries.  Overfishing definitely has a role to play in the depletion of the huge runs, but the hydroelectric – flood control dams have even more hugely impacted the once vast movements of fish.  A recent visit to a small local waterfall brought to light part of the plight of the fish encountering physical obstructions to their journeys. One answer to the problem, fish ladders.

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