Klamath Suckers

by Bear Bait

Posted November 16, 2008

Klamath River, hmmmm…   So extraordinarily good ocean conditions produced a huge survival of Klamath stock fall Chinook salmon, mostly from hatchery origin. Hatcheries, years ago, would take the first returning fish back to the hatchery for spawning, as they have goals to meet and commissions to answer to. The eventual result of the Iron Gate Hatchery program on the Klamath River is that the salmon return about 3 weeks too early and in a concentrated group because releases are not staged for different times.

Now we have a huge Pacific Coast run of salmon, the ocean trollers have done well, the fall gillnet season is open on the Columbia River, and the offered prices are under $0.25 per pound in the round. Hardly worth the fishing effort. The market is sated.

And so it is, too, for the Klamath River tribal fishermen, who have easy fishing. They sell all they can out of ice totes in pickups parked along the highways.  Now their market is weak and almost profit-less. So they are smoking  some, but that market is slow, too. Klamath salmon are offered to SF fish buyers,  but all they command is a dime a pound for in-river fall Klamath River Chinook.

Now the Tribes have all but quit fishing, and the ocean is closed from Cape Mendocino to north of the Klamath River estuary to ocean fishing. The river filled with fish, but early so it was still summer, and a droughty one at that.  Too many fish in too little water and parasites and low oxygen all took their toll. And dead fish use more of the oxygen in decomposition.

You must know, of course, that the Klamath River is composed of many other streams in California. The Trinity River is equal to the Klamath in size and joins the Klamath 42 miles above the outlet to the Pacific. It originates in the Trinity Alps, fed by melting snow fields, and is the cold water tributary. The mainstem Klamath is fed by the Klamath marshes and is much warmer water.

About 60% of the Trinity’s flow, by Babbitt treaty, is diverted into the Sacramento River in the Shasta Dam pool by a dam, canal, and tunnel system high in the headwaters (before Babbitt, as much as 95% of the Trinity River was diverted). That water goes to California ag and domestic use, and is not on the bargaining table. So the trinity River does not cool the Klamath in summer when the first fish arrive. And the Shasta River, which arises on the slopes of Mt. Shasta snow fields, is also a cool water river, but is over 100% irrigation-subscribed and also off the table.

California has 50 or more members of Congress.  Oregon has 5 Reps and two senators.  Can you see the power play at work in this,  oh ye of the Green River to Colorado River to the All American Canal and Imperial Valley and Los Angeles?  Those 50 plus in Congress trump the rest of the Colorado river representation.

So now we have a low river, warm from drought, and the California cool water tributaries are all being used for irrigation.  But in Oregon the water runs through Oregon’s largest, shallowest lake, the Klamath, before it passes through the dams to California.

It was the Chicago power combine of Jay Insul who built those dams, as the Copco Corp. (California Oregon Power Company).   In addition, in Oregon, the Clear Lake reservoir was built for irrigation, and that water sent to the Merrill, Malin, and Tulelake areas,  where the US Govt gave war veterans land to create irrigated farms for their service to their country, by lottery.

Later, a sub species of suckerfish was found to live in the reservoir, and bogus science has determined that Clear Lake has to maintain a certain level for ESA-listed suckers. The promised (contracted) irrigation flow has been restricted, but the farmers have to keep on paying for the dam and canals, with less water on fewer acres. The Clear Lake water, in a vast and shallow reservoir, cannot solve water temperature issues on the Klamath River, even if it could be drawn down, which it can’t be due to the suckerfish. Nor can the Wood, Sprague, and Williamson Rivers (cool waters) help because they must first pass through Klamath Lake where the water is warmed, robbed of oxygen by decomposing marsh vegetation, packed with parasites, and then sent on downriver. A blast of that warm water in August would kill every salmonid in the Klamath below Iron Gate dam.

But that is not the point. Nobody really cares about the Klamath River salmon, despite the smug rhetoric. They are, after all, almost worthless as a market commodity. Nope, the alleged Domination By Man Over the Environment is the bugaboo issue, and the Enviro Nanny State bleeding heart folks don’t like that. Nothing worse than the Domination By Man. Man bad, Nature good. Domination is only acceptable in power politics and SF bedrooms.

So we have a river full of fish, a banner run, in the river too early because of hatchery practices and someone prematurely opening the river mouth with a bulldozer, so that fish can be available for a longer time for Tribal fishermen (whose bulldozer did they use in the 19th century?), who are losing money salmon fishing because the market is glutted. Meanwhile the water use is regulated and much is warmed in storage because of another ESA issue (the suckerfish), so the warm, de-oxygenated, parasite-filled water (that the very same Greenies litigated to capture forever) hits the Klamath in August, and the salmon die in copious numbers.

Some say as many as 80,000 returning adult salmon are strangled by that warm water. The die-off diminishes when the nights get sufficiently short, the diurnal forces produce the first frosts of the year, the sun sinks lower to the south (shading river and creek sections that were in full sun just a week or two before), and the water temperatures sink to lower levels. With cooler water the parasites are reduced and the fish quit dying.

Tearing down the dams (and the end of hydro power generation) will not change any of that, nor will it matter. The transmission lines are there, and someone will find a way to connect them with turbines on ridges on private lands, timbered or not, and a small percentage of the power will be replaced. But salmon returning too early in too dry a year in too warm water will still die in the river.  And the water from the Trinity will still go to Merced and Fresno, and the California delegation will try to pin the tail of blame on anyone who does not vote for them.

One might speculate that bad ocean survival for salmon would cause the California congressional delegation to punish Hawaii, and they might attempt to take Hawaii’s abundant rainfall and put it in a pipe to San Diego as mitigation for too much warm water flowing in currents to our West Coast from the Mid Pacific. And for Cod’s sake, fulminate that Sarah Palin is at fault when the North Pacific High does not set up in the right area, and we get an El Nino winter. Time to take Alaskan oil money and use it to build a 2,500 mile pipeline to take some of Hawaii’s abundant water.

Too many fish from a provident ocean, too little water due to diversion to points south, too early salmon returns due to poor hatchery practices, too early of an opening of the sand dune blocking the low flow summer river where it falls into the ocean, too few of fish allowed to be caught because of Tribal and other social engineering issues by a sensitive government, too many fish in the market place, too many fish in cold storage, too many fish in the smokers, too low of prices to fishermen due to the plethora of fish, and you get the perfect storm to cause an extraordinary die off of fall Chinook, Oregon agriculture, and the economy of the region.

And then,  if that were not enough, Oregon fisheries biologists of the past will tell you that a fall die off is common place on the Rogue River, about the size of the Klamath (without the Trinity added to it), and there have been past years when tens of thousands of fall fish have died due to lack of cold water and water volume.  Only the Rogue River does not have a tribal fishery and does not run through California.  The two societal differences.  The two political differences. The advocacy groups lack the levers to keep the balls of perceived discrimination in the air, and Oregon does not have egregious water theft as a part of our culture as they do in California.

As for all the fish science in this deal, it is all moot because of politics. Politics have determined who gets what water and where. Fish science is quaint and interesting,  but it does not grow almonds and winegrapes in California,  and does not drive every facet of 35 million Californians’ daily life. Water does that, not fish science.  Abundant, cheap water drove Silicon Valley manufacturing. And that water feeds a whole lot of Americans from the myriad crops growing all year in California. I guess the water used in Oregon does not have quite the same impact. I guess Oregon farmers grow inferior quality crops, like Klamath alfalfa. In this water issue Oregon has only one rural (non Portland/Eugene) member of Congress. So it really is one against 434. The latest outcome was in the cards a long time ago.