13 ms·
Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years
- ficklepickle 6y agoIt's nice and all, but it is unlikely to lead to a returning salmon population. Even if the spawn make it through the dams, they won't be able to come back when they reach spawning age. They need to invest tons of money in salmon ladders and naturalization, for example, like we are doing in BC. That would be quite the project for the Grand Coulee dam, as I remember it being quite large. Hopefully this is the first step in the massive commitment that will be needed to restore the salmon population there. The salmon run is such an important part of the ecosystem.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoThey can if they have supporting Salmon Cannons![1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z3ZyGlqUkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z3ZyGlqUkA
- burtonator 6y agoIf native populations are going to come back and be sustainable we have to tear down the damns. I realize that causes other political issues but that's the only way we're going to have native populations. I'm an avid fisherman and really LOVE fish. They're amazing animals. Fisherman have a connection to nature that just can't be appreciated unless you have spent significant time on the water. Fish are SMART, they're capable of amazing things I wouldn't have even considered possible. I once had a large trout swim UP a (short, about 4') waterfall with my lure in his mouth and I could SEE him swimming up it as if it were just normal water. When we let nature die a part of us dies with it..
- amscanne 6y agoFish are amazing, but do you really think they are SMART? In my experience, fish are incredibly stupid and wholly reliant on instinct. I suppose instincts can seem like intelligence sometimes, but if put into the wrong situation, fish will make the same mistake over and over and over again.
- bb88 6y agoBy that standard the monarch butterfly is stupid too. That said they are smart enough to follow only a portion of their full migratory route which takes 4 generations to complete. Squirrels remember where they bury their nuts. Octopuses can solve puzzles. So what about fish? Salmon remember where they were spawned before they head out to the ocean, and come back to the exact same pool to spawn before dying. https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/02/13/mystery-solved-salmon-navigate-using-magnetic-field/ https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/02/13/mystery-solve... So sure, they're not "SMART" but there is a lot of "intelligence" they have acquired over many generations of evolutionary cycles.
- bombela 6y agoSquirrel do not remember much though. They fill the ground with nuts. Then they dig the ground seemingly at random. Most of theis caches are forgotten. Which often leads to nuts trees sprouting all over the place during spring.
- bb88 6y agohttps://www.livescience.com/64104-how-do-squirrels-find-buried-nuts.html https://www.livescience.com/64104-how-do-squirrels-find-buri... This article seems to suggest otherwise.
- BurningFrog 6y agoI'll settle this; Salmon, butterflies and squirrels are all dumb as hell. What they are is incredibly well adapted to reproduce and survive on this crazy planet!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- forgotmypw 6y agoPeople say this about many beings, and even about other humans. What they all have in common is a lack of exposure to those they denigrate and reduce in their mind to dumb automatons. I don't think you are smart to say that about anyone you haven't spent much time around or bonded with in any significant way.
- Retric 6y agoMany large dams play a major role in flood mitigation so removing them can be a significant risk. IMO, traditional fish ladders are often a poor solution as they don’t divert enough water down them, but scale things to 10+% of average flow rates, and dams can coexist with large native fish populations. Notably discharge rates that high significantly reduce the amount of hydropower generated, but don’t need to be maintained year round. However, most small and mid sized dams should be removed as they harm wildlife and are often a safety issue for the general public. PS: In terms of supporting evidence. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925857416305936#bib0215 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092585741...
- irrational 6y agoHonestly, if the choice is removing the dams and moving to more polluting energy forms, or letting the fish go extinct, I think letting the fish go extinct is the best choice at this time. Maybe we freeze their fertilized eggs and reintroduce them at some point in the future when climate change has been reversed.
- wolco2 6y agoYou realize in 600ad the temp was a 1 hotter than today. There is no maybe we reintroduce at a later time because whatever you think needs to happen with climate change never will. I would rather you pay more and pay the full costs of your electrical use. Use solar, wind or invest in a nuclear plant if removing carbon is imported. Causing extinction in the name of climate change when really it's about cheaper prices is a non-starter.
- eganist 6y ago> You realize in 600ad the temp was a 1 hotter than today. There is no maybe we reintroduce at a later time because whatever you think needs to happen with climate change never will. Interesting. Do you have a source for this?
- wolco2 6y agohttps://www.history.org.uk/primary/resource/3865/anglo-saxons-a-brief-history https://www.history.org.uk/primary/resource/3865/anglo-saxon...
- eganist 6y agoGot it. They may have gotten their figures wrong - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
- margalabargala 6y ago> You realize in 600ad the temp was a 1 hotter than today. No, I've done a fair amount of research into the historical climate of the PNW and I've never heard that before! Do you have any journal articles so I can read more about it?
- rhodozelia 6y ago>“We have to tear down the dams” Surely there must be another possible solution that more Closely mimics the river before the dams were built ?
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> I once had a large trout swim UP a (short, about 4') waterfall with my lure in his mouth and I could SEE him swimming up it as if it were just normal water. This would be much like the scene in The Hobbit with Legolas successfully gaining elevation by climbing up free-falling rubble.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- coryrc 6y agoWe don't need to make such a large investment. I, for one, am satisfied with the ecology today and would rather have lower electricity rates and get people into electric cars and off gas heat.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoWell maybe someone would like a salmon-related job, and the project would pay for itself - it is one of those infrastructure cases where those that build the improvement createna benefit for someone else
- wolco2 6y agoStart investing in nuclear and you can have both.
- evmar 6y agoI grew up in a small town in the PNW that has a yearly salmon festival, and it wasn't until a post from HN[1] that I learned/realized that the whole system of "fish hatcheries" that my town celebrated is kind of a horrible bandaid over the ecological disaster we perpetrated. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298472 , definitely worth a read if you care about salmon
- vba 6y agoLeavenworth? Also cool work history/projects from your website
- Herodotus38 6y agoI know Issaquah has 'Salmon Days'
- steve_adams_86 6y agoThere is a documentary about this as well (https://youtu.be/XdNJ0JAwT7I https://youtu.be/XdNJ0JAwT7I), which I thought was fascinating. I learned from this and one other (I’ve forgotten the name) that the salmon likely suffer far less from overfishing than most people believe. Perhaps what happened is the primary population pressures occurred until fishing pressure became noticeable. At that point people pointed their fingers to the most obvious cause of salmon deaths and missed the ones we’re only recently becoming more broadly aware of. Not to say fishing doesn’t make a difference. It’s just not the only problem. Fish farm research was suppressed by the Canadian government which showed that the farms were spreading vast amounts of disease very consistently, for example. One disease acted so quickly that the fish would die before they could spawn. Fortunately the research surfaced eventually and farms are largely being shut down, but these farms have been operating for decades. It’s a very complex and frightening problem. I’m glad we’re making progress in understanding it better.
- waynecochran 6y agoThat means those salmon have to make there way thru about 10 or 11 dams! Dams provide so many good things (clean energy, passable water, flood protection, ...). If the salmon can spawn that would be ideal!
- killjoywashere 6y agoReaders may also find this review of methods of building salmon-friendly dams interesting: https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/pdf-content/mfr8023.pdf https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/pdf-content/mf...
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoWe must learn to live with hydro power and dams. It’s such an incredible and clean source of energy. It’s low maintenance and has a high duty cycle, with only nuclear being a more consistent. Dams are also how many parts of the US irrigate crops for our food.
- bb88 6y agoIn Idaho we have Red Fish Lake, named after the sockeye salmon that would congregate there, often turning the lake red due to their numbers. In 2019, only 18 salmon returned to the lake. Further 4 dams in the Snake River are not used for hydro power, nor are they for flood control. They were used to try to make Idaho a major sea port -- despite the fact that Idaho is several hundred files from the ocean. https://discoversawtooth.org/what-happened-to-the-red-fish-of-redfish-lake https://discoversawtooth.org/what-happened-to-the-red-fish-o...
- lumberingjack 6y agoChop down 98% of american indigenous forests to make room for homes, drain all the wetlands in socal for gold miners. But all no we can't have clean power cus of some fishis that my tribe that originally owned that land didn't even care about.
- oppenh3imer 6y agoWe have programs for both reforestation and for wetland preservation. With any conservation proposal, one must weigh the pros and cons. In this case it is true that hydropower is cheap and clean. However, the negative externality of destroying the salmon run is much more than "some fishis" that some Indian tribes cared about. Aboriginal annual salmon catches have been estimated at over 10 million pounds for year. On top of that, the migration of pacific salmon upriver represents an enormous transfer of nutrients upstream. Salmon are a keystone species and are vitally important for the health of forests. Unfortunately, the salmon run cannot easily coexist with the dams. Yes, there is value in the hydropower. Yes, it is cheap, clean energy. But it is certainly not without cost. We could be reaping the benefits of one of the largest animal migrations on our planet in a sustainable way. Even disregarding the cultural importance to native peoples there is still enormous economic and ecological value in having a healthy salmon run.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoHydro is a double edged sword. Washington produces 70% of its energy from clean hydro, and supplies almost a quarter of the nation’s hydro power. Nothing is free.
- intrepidhero 6y agoAlso provides a fantastic balancing reserve for all the wind and solar generation in the region. Downstream survival rates for juvenile fish are in the high 90s for all the dams on the lower Columbia. [1] Grand Coulee produces more energy than any hydro project in North America so I expect it's worth keeping around even if we have to make some modifications to improve survival rates on the upper Columbia. [1] https://www.bpa.gov/news/pubs/FactSheets/fs-201306-Columbia-Basin-salmon-and-steelhead-many-routes-to-the-ocean.pdf https://www.bpa.gov/news/pubs/FactSheets/fs-201306-Columbia-...
- rhodozelia 6y agoSurvival rates are high going downstream, can the salmon get back upstream or are there no fish ladders past some point?
- intrepidhero 6y agoThe big dams on the upper Columbia do not have fish ladders. Although Grand Coulee did have one during construction. I've been looking for data on survival rates for upstream fish... but a brief search hasn't turned up the data I was looking for.
- merb 6y agoI was raised in a small german village near the rhine. which also has a big project to reintroduce salmon: https://www.salmoncomeback.org/ https://www.salmoncomeback.org/ and https://www.iksr.org/en/icpr/rhine-2020/salmon-2020 https://www.iksr.org/en/icpr/rhine-2020/salmon-2020 as far as I know salmon was back since 2016 in these regions which was a huge breaktrough.
- jjhawk 6y agoSalmon by Mark Kurlansky is a fantastic read on the historical + ecological history of of this.
- locusofself 6y agoPretty sure this is the first time I've seen my hometown newspaper on HN. Neat. My brother works in Bellingham WA doing Salmon related research stuff.
- phnofive 6y agoWas going to say the same - can’t remember seeing spokesman.com here before.
- astura 6y agoIf you click on the URL in parentheses next to the title you'll see previous submissions for that site https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=spokesman.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=spokesman.com
- macinjosh 6y agoI don't really care. Environmentalists will never happy until the world's population is so low that they feel like 'nature' is unaffected by humans. In reality that means they want the world to themselves and anyone with any other interests to be plant fertilizer. There haven't been a specific kind of fish there for _eighty_ years and it hasn't impacted human life so why do we need to spend tax dollars to have them there now? It is complete lunacy based on a fetish for a 'natural' state that isn't real. News flash, humans are natural and I don't loathe them like some environmentalists do. People are starving and dying of viruses (both 'natural' states I'll add) but we need to spend our time and money building a fucking ladder for a fish? I speak truth even though I will be downvoted into oblivion. Worth it.
- forgotmypw 6y agoWe are biological creatures, and part of the biome. All of the artificial things we've created do nothing to sustain our existence, only to facilitate our connection with the biome. If, in the process of facilitating this connection, we eliminate the biome's ability to sustain itself, most of us will be dead very quickly. That's one of the reasons people care so much. Another reason, if you suspend your human-centric worldview, is seeing other creatures as our relatives on the biological tree of live, admitting their ability to have feelings and desires and suffering, and caring for their plight and happiness alongside ours. We don't have to kill the biome to sustain ourselves. In fact, the opposite is true.
- fractallyte 6y agoTake a look at this: https://imgur.com/gallery/9v4HV2p https://imgur.com/gallery/9v4HV2p There are nearly 8 billion humans on Earth. Can you see the disparity? And here is a slice of the result: https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ If you feel like learning more about „The Great Forgetting“, read this: The Once and Future World, by J B MacKinnon (http://jbmackinnon.com/books.html http://jbmackinnon.com/books.html). Contact me if you want the ebook.
- fractallyte 6y agoI'm curious why someone would downvote this. Care to write a proper reply instead? I'm stating facts - why do you disagree?
- tima101 6y agoI live not far from where Columbia river comes out to US from Canada, in US portion of Selkirk Mountains. This is north of Coulee Dam. It's good that salmon can come into this area but smelter from Trail, BC has been polluting upper Columbia river for about hundred years. With chemicals and smelter sludge. Fish is not edible, sand is black from sludge. Salmon may have reached upper Columbia river, but water in that part of the river is heavily polluted. And south of Coulee Dam, there is storage of nuclear waste, just north of Richmond, WA - Hanford site. Nuclear waste already leaks into Columbia river, north of Tri-Cities area. So in my opinion, human created disasters in the Columbia river, rank in this order: nuclear waste at Hanford site > smelter at Trail, BC > Dams without passage for fish. Sorry for typos, typing from phone.
- igorstellar 6y agoHow nuclear waste leaves power plant? I always was under impression the core is heavily isolated and water is just cooling or used for turbines.
- tima101 6y agoNo active reactor but 53 million US gallons (200,000 m3) of high-level radioactive waste stored within 177 storage tanks, an additional 25 million cubic feet (710,000 m3) of solid radioactive waste, and areas of heavy Technetium-99 and uranium contaminated groundwater beneath three tank farms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site Federal government promised to clean up but failed.
- AareyBaba 6y agoCleaning Up the Cold War’s Nuclear Legacy at Hanford https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/a-glass-nightmare-cleaning-up-the-cold-wars-nuclear-legacy-at-hanford https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/a-glass-nightma... "During Hanford’s plutonium-production heyday, workers discharged some 1.7 trillion liters of waste liquids into soil disposal sites, which developed into vast underground plumes of toxic chemicals, including the carcinogens hexavalent chromium and carbon tetrachloride [PDF], that infiltrated aquifers."